wordy

We have a modern version of apocalyptic views.

Alien Abductions. Many of the believers in those groups also has apocalyptic views. Aliens having a superior to us technology will come and teach us how to make life on earth less polluted. Others think that Aliens create a go between, tey know from research that we don't accept "Lizzard" humaniods so they try to create an alien hybrid looking like us but being lizzard somehow in essence but being able to word like ambassadors.

Christ as a "spiritual" entity incarnating as "Jesus" could be seen as a kind of hybrid. God is too remote to know us as a fellow human does. Christ is that part of God that is able to take human form but still retain something of God within and by "following Jesus" we too could be saved.

As I see it it is all a social construct by the apocalyptic groups active in that time or it is a later construct based on their interpretations, using them as a historical reference to get credibility.

Chris Weimer

We also have better parallels - real people going out and saying that the world is going to end. And some have been notable, including Jim Jones. What is different about apocalypticism in Jesus' time and apocalypticism in Jim Jones' time? And why does the figure Jesus become eradicated as a myth if apocalypticism preceeded him by hundreds of years?

DBT

But at what point did the myth begin? What was the motivation?...An oppressed people's strong desire for a messiah? Social control?

Chris Weimer

Who are you talking to?

DBT

I'm not fussy...anyone who cares to answer.

Chris Weimer

You won't get one answer - many mythcists have tried to answer that here with all different responses.

angelo

I'm pressed for time so i can't read all the posts, so someone may have already state the obvious. Outside of the gospels there is not a shred of evidence for this myth. Yes I know of Josephus and Tacitus and others, but these people were writing hearsay, decades after the events were supposed to have occurred. Plenty of time for Christians to write forgeries. Not one eyewitness has uttered a word, or written a word of any Jesus. Science does not work in such a fashion, we need provable facts, not hearsay.

Chris Weimer

Incredible, another argument from silence. Tell me, why do you think the Gospels are unreliable? And what do you make of the rest of the New Testament? And what about the Extra-canonical gospels? Your above stated is factually wrong.

~M~

i thought this was more of a philosophical question, not historical. oh well.

tecoyah

Leaving aside for a moment the reality of Jesus, I wish to address the question as to scriptural validity. Unless we assume that "God" was there to guide the hands of every scribe, interpreter, and scholar that created what we today read as the bible(s), there will be errors in the texts. The simple fact that there are multiple versions of these interpretations of ancient scriptures is testament to this reality. I have found many similarities in the books but no two are the same...so which one do you suppose is the accurate word of God, and which ones have the errors?
More importantly, are you in communication with the deity and thus capable of making the distinction without further error?