RPS

In other words, a Shakespeare existed but we still know very little about Shakespeare. You make my point for me.

I don't claim to know. We know very little about antiquity. Ancient history isn't involved in knowing.

There is documentation for a Shakespeare, but debate over who really wrote the plays (Francis Bacon? Christopher Marlowe? Edward de Vere?), the chronology of the writing, how much of the writing was collaberative, what happened during the "lost years," whether he was a secret Catholic activist, yada, yada, yada. Need I mention that we're able to figure out infinitely more about the 17th C. than about antiquity?

Read the litrature. The outline is the same with all kinds of disagreements over how the outline is filled in (with -- surprise! -- the constructed Jesus looking a lot like an ideal version of the author). The real problem is outcome-based thinking by the anti-Christian crowd (very similar to the thinking of creationists). Note what historian Michael Grant (not a Christian apologist by a long shot) says about the discussion: "if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." Grant, Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, (Scribner's 1981) pp. 199-200.

If you believe that then history is basically useless.

spamandham

This only implies that all four books are based on something that preceeds them, and that the authors believed what they were writing was historical.

Although, I see no reason to dismiss a conspiracy. A conspiracy involving a few dozen people or so is still vastly more plausible than what the NT records. We know that conspiracies do actually happen, and there was a strong motive for such a conspiracy (to end the jewish rebellions), potential conspirators would have been in position to pull it off (Roman officials), and there is a "money trail" (Christianity DID help unite the empire). So even the conspiracy idea seems about as good as any other on the surface.

However, there is a simpler explanation yet, which is that someone wrote a book that syncretized pagan new age of Pisces ideas with Jewish ideas, and it spawned a new religion. Everything that came after that (including the gospels, etc.) simply record various evolutionary branches of the original story. This is the Fictional Jesus (FJ) position, and there's nothing even remotely implausible with it, nor does it violate any of the evidence known.

Biff the unclean

The problem with this is; there’s no Yeshua/ Yeshua-like person in real life that we know of who was the model for the fictional one. And there is really no need for one in order to explain the fictional one who could just as easily been concocted independently.
If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing the lives of demigods, we can no more accept Jesus' existence than we can accept the existence of a mass of pagan demigods whose lack of reality as historical figures is never questioned.
Hercules, Dionysus, all that lot; the idea that they were not based on actual men is never in question because there is no historic evidence to support such a contention.

There were real men, Nero, Caligula, etc, who claimed to be demigods but their historicity is based on actual evidence independent of the gospels that were printed declaring their godhood.

Biff the unclean

But if this were so wouldn’t you expect the early Christians to use the symbol of Pisces (a single fish until a second was added in the middle ages) instead of a cross…..ooops. Never mind.

Koyaanisqatsi

Outside the New Testament, you mean.

True, but most myths typically arise from some real life event or individual. King Arthur would be a good example. So the key to uncovering the reality if one had no other resource but L'morte d'Arthur would be to strip away anything fantastical and see what is most likely or could be considered most likely, I should say, in any of the stories.

To continue that analogy, you'd have a beloved English King likely named Arthur or some variant, whose reign was short, but prosperous and considered enlightened for the times, possibly brought down by a tragic affair between his best friend and the Queen, but more likely brought down by a rival, more barbaric Kingdom though more probably the Church; a "those were the days" embellishment mythology created by those living under the oppressive "result" of that enlightened collapse more commonly known as the "dark ages" reflecting back to how the once prosperous glory days of Kings and Kingdoms and the nobility of Man were undermined by the yolk of Christianity.

Or, it could be total fiction, no doubt.

Back to jeezy creezy, one can easily see within the surviving "gospels" that it's likely a popular Rabbi seditionist leader was crucified publicly by the Romans at a critical time in their occupation that backfired and as a result, revisionist propaganda in the form of Mark and Paul becomes a "psy-ops" necessity that goes hand-in-hand with both the rising Jewish revolution and the need to brutally destroy it by the Romans some thirty five or six years later and how the subsequent creation of a "Christianity" followed it in the manner I laid out previously.

That all follows perfectly with what we know about human mythology creation and formation; it explains why an evidently non-Jewish scribe (Mark), some forty years after the alleged crucifixion, would so pathetically twist what actually happened (a Roman trial where a popular insurrectionist leader was publicly killed) into pro-Roman, anti-Judaic propaganda; and betrays a deliberate manipulation of a religious belief structure to turn conquered people into, as the NT relates (I would argue, reveals), sheep led by their Roman shepherds.

The entire mythos is rather easily explained once one remembers that it is the victors who write the history and the victors were the Romans; not the Jews. Hence, you have a Roman revision of Judaism brazenly called the "New Testament" that for whole centuries had to be accepted as unquestionably true, or you'd face either spiritual or physical torture and death.

Not that difficult to comprehend, particularly in light of how such memes tend to take on a life of their own at some point and then all it takes is someone smart enough to harness that horse and ride it into town. And as the sayings go, all roads lead to Rome.

:huh:

Solo

...Beulah, spell me a greap !

Actually, Paul enters this saga with the words..."Sorry, guys, I am late".

It's in reality San Diego, from where the Jewish-controlled U.S. Naval Intelligence was operating, according to Paul.

This apparently comes from a dispatch known as "Caligula's Drag Orders to Paul" destroyed by Opus Dei. It was of course Eusebius before who faked Paul's letters written to already ignorant peasants at large, as addressing knowledgeable urban churches of the Empire.

I didn't know that actual historical events had an agenda.

...converting from a gladiola, nota bene.

He was not a Kommandant, he was a Gauleiter as every schoolboy knows.

....not clear about who is supposed to be doing the supposing here...

who could that be in the 1st century ???

oh San Diego, I see.

for we live in the best possible worlds, as Dr.Pangloss says.

How many "holy Temples" did the "orthodox" Jews have, may I ask ?

The Goths, split between Western and Eastern Empire, Attila, the Vandals, the collapse of the West, the Saracens, do not enter into the "powerhouse that it (Rome) is". Why was Charlemagne's revived "Roman" empire operated from Aachen ? Mystery.

The Holy Roman Empire was abolished in 1806 under pressure of Napoleon. In 1750's Voltaire famously defined the institution as not Holy, not Roman and not an Empire.


Jiri

Koyaanisqatsi

Ok. "g-r-e-a-p." Greap.

Tell that to the current Pope. I'm sure he'd be fascinated.

Biff the unclean

He does appear in numerous books that were not included in the NT. We don’t usually bother with them because the RCC declared them to be fiction.

But we aren’t actually talking about Mythic Jesus. Like the god Serapis, Jesus life is constructed of pre-existing myths, but that does not make him mythic. That makes him fictional.

A fine example…but not actually of the conditions being talked about. We have an actual historic person in the case of Arthur

There is no way that you could arrive at reality by that process. Only something that looked like reality.
Imagine doing this with Harry Potter, you’d get back to a non-magical orphan living in the suburbs of London. Seems reasonable, but there is no real historic Harry Potter, Harry isn’t myth, he’s fiction.

So to have an historic Jesus you would need an actual historic person for the myth to form around like you do with King Arthur or Robin Hood. We don’t have that, nor do we have a compelling reason to make such a leap.

You don’t have or need an actual human Rabbi for this.
You have an anti-Jewish book where the Jews kill their own Messiah. The very guy who was to free them from the Romans. The Jews are such shits that they kill their own God.

The reason I find the likelihood of a core person to be low is that for 2000 years Christians have been desperate for a historic Jesus. And they have a track record of grasping at ridiculous straws (note: the Shroud of Turin). So if there were a core figure to be had, no matter how tenuous, they would have latched onto him.

Considering Constantine and friends, they also get to re-edit it even after it’s been written.

Or Constantinople.

Solo

Seriously now, are saying that Vatican is the Holy Roman Empire ?

Jiri

David B

True, we don't have a compelling reason. However, we have the less than compelling, but still sometimes useful, induction that makes it at worst a plausible reason to make the leap, IMV. Lots of myths have a natural core of truth to them. No reason that I can see to see this one as any different.

Especially (well, only) insofar as the ordinary claims are concerned - like some charismatic leader on the Koresh model, wandered around seeking converts to some exceptional events that were supposed to happen soon, got a few converts, and the miraculous claims failed to occur.

Not at all insofar as the supernatural claims are concerned, since supernatural claims fall into three sets - those shown to be false, those shown to be not proven, and those proved to reasonable standards.

This last set is empty, as far as I can see.

Actually, AFAIK, Arthur and Hood are not really well attested to, historically.

David B (still works on the hypothesis that there was a man behind the myth)