-Jay-

Absolutely. Hence the frequent objections raised in these fora of the form "You can'tuse the Bible to prove the legendary events or people in the Bible..."

That more people don't find this trivially obvious is disturbing.

regards,

NinJay

Gaga

yeah, that's what I was thinking about as I wrote :devil1:
This is one of those thing that shake my otherwise fairly optimistic view of the future of humanity. These are the same people that consider the Flud^TM a genuine scientific argument which hasn't been explored to satisfaction. Before the Internet I thought I would have never witnessed something like this :frown:

-Jay-

I like this. Can I use it?

regards,

NinJay

Gaga

Of course.. btw, it's not mine but I don't think it has any kind of copyright
You probably haven't read enough of the other AFdave threads in E/C, there's a wealth of mocking permutations of some of the basic words of the YEC vocabulary, there

Lucretius

I always thought it was Ye Fludde^TM to give it that completely bogus "historic feel "

-Jay-

I've given afdave's opinions on Evolution all the attention they deserve. :devil1:

regards,

NinJay

-Jay-

How about "Ye Olde Fludde^TM? (Olde pronounced "old-ee", of course...)

regards,

NinJay

gstafleu

"Myth" comes from the Greek "mythos" which means "word, speech," and, by extension, "tale, story, narrative [...] without distinction of true or false" (Lidell and Scott). The idea that a myth is "false," i.e. non-historical, is probably an Enlightenment idea. Many myths contain religious material, and one of the ideas of the Enlightenment era is that religion is not history.

We can find something similar for "legend" in Legend: The word "legend" appeared in the English language circa 1340, transmitted from medieval Latin language through French. Its blurred extended (and essentially Protestant) sense of a non-historical narrative or myth was first recorded in 1613. By emphasizing the unrealistic character of "legends" of the saints, English-speaking Protestants were able to introduce a note of contrast to the "real" saints and martyrs of the Reformation, whose authentic narratives could be found in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Thus "legend" gained its modern connotations of "undocumented" and "spurious".

I sometimes find is useful to see "legend" as "mythical components attached to an otherwise real (historical) person." Augustus e.g. was said to be virginally conceived (legend), but he was a real person.

Many cultural icons have legend attached to them, the challenge is to find out what is legend and what is real. In the case of Jesus there is no doubt that a lot that we know about him is legend. Some will argue that there is, or must be, a real person beneath that, others, like Robert Price, while not disagreeing with this, find that the only visible parts are legend, so the historical part, if any, is hypothetical to the point of irrelevance. And then we have people like Doherty, who claims that the development of Christianity shows it started with a purely mythical being, and from this concludes there never was a historical core.

We have a similar situation with for example the Buddha and Confucius. Joseph Campbell e.g. starts his section on Confucius (Oriental Mythology, p414) with the remark "The more one learns about Confucius, the more mirage-like the figure becomes."

My guess is that, when it comes to cultural icons, we always have a lot of legend. The more important to the culture, the more axes to grind, the more legend. This then often ends in a situation where, for the most culturally and religiously central figures, we may no longer be able to distinguish between myth and history. Given that the importance of these figures is, by that time, solely expressed in the mythical parts, we may as well call them purely mythical, because for all practical intents and purposes that is what they are.

Gerard Stafleu

spin

The word "book" comes from an ancient Germanic word meaning "beech", so should we conclude that a book must be text written on trees? One must be careful when looking at etymology for the derivation can be a long way from the root.

When we use the word "mythology" what sense does the "myth-" part carry? And when the phrase "myths and legends" is used what distinction is being maintained between myths and legends?

It is important to note that the claim is not one of a fictitious being but of a mythical one. What distinction delineated here between mythical and fictitious?

Look at them, myths:

• Adam's rib,
• Marduk's battle with Tiamat,
• Orpheus turning around,
• The wheel of Khnum,
• The fall,
• Mithra slaying the bull,
• The dying god,
• Isis collecting Osiris's dismembered body, and so on...

They all tell a story, but the story isn't what they are about. They each have a religio-cultural purpose behind them. Surely you can see the difference between this sort of material and that which we call legend, people who lived meritorious lives, did good deeds, grandiose deeds, incredible deeds.

Our purpose amongst others is to use language carefully in order to be precise when we analyse our material, but I notice that there is a lot of discrepancy in the perceived significances of the terms we all use.

The discussion which revolves around the false dichotomy MJ/HJ is partly born out of many people's different perceptions of the terms "mythical" and "historical". What I've seen from those who have written extensively on the notion of a mythical Jesus stems from a strict notion of "myth" which contains a clearly religious component to the story perceived to be the center of the religion. That myth is discernable most clearly in the work of Paul.

We use the term "history" technically to relate to what (can be shown to have) actually happened in the past. -- If it can't be shown, then it can't really be considered historical, although it can't be considered, in itself, not to have happened.

We can have reports of events from the past that didn't happen. What those reports are might be 1) mythical, 2) fictional or 3) based on errors. There may be others but these three should be considered useful distinctions. The first indicates something that developed from religious necessity (this is where Doherty seems to be), the second was actively invented (eg Jesus was created by a Flavian conspiracy), and erroneous assumptions can be made about the world (as in the case of Ebion, the erroneously conceived founder of the Ebionites)... this last should include wishful thinking as well, which is a specific type of erroneous assumption, as well as transmission errors.


spin

joedad

Is it safe to say then that Paul’s Jesus is mythical and that Mark’s is fictional? Mark's Jesus is an invention like a character from Gone with the Wind or Grapes of Wrath.