mountainman

This poll has been designed to test the distribution of opinion on the issue of whether or not there is any "Historical Core" to the figure of Jesus as declared in the new testament literature. There are three options:

(1) Jesus is historical all the way down

One opinion might be that there is no myth to the Jesus story at all. It is all 100% historical, and 0% myth has been overlayed on an historical core.

(2) Jesus has some sort of historical core

A second opinion might be that Jesus is a mixture of both history and myth in various ratios. Some people might like to think of the ratio as 90% history and 10% myth, or as 50% history and 50% myth, or as 90% myth and 10% history. This option is reserved for those who think that there is some hisorical core to the figure of Jesus, no matter how small and covered over with myth this small fragment might be.

(3) Jesus is myth all the way down.

Finally a third opinion might be that there is no historical core whatsoever in the figure of Jesus, and that Jesus is therefore 100% myth all the way down, with 0% history.


The "Agnostic" Position

This was not included. Are there many people who for one reason or another do not wish to take a position on this question of whether or not the figure of Jesus has an "Historical Core"? Or who for one reason or another wish to remain open to more than one of these three options? If so, please elaborate.

couch_sloth

I would choose the agnostic position first, between position #2 and #3 (#1 seems silly to me).
I just think that too much time has passed to determine if there is actually any historical core to the person of Jesus.



But if I had to bet on one of the three I would choose #2.
It seems to me that there could have been some form of historical Jesus whose exploits became more and more exaggerated by some of his followers/admirers because they felt a driving need to show how great he was (e.g. That Jesus was greater than other contending prophets and/or messiahs)...
but this is just in the realm of speculation.

Toto

Why was this previous poll not sufficient?

Juststeve

Toto:

The previous poll was insufficient because I didn't vote. Without my vote how could it possible be sufficient?

Steve

Splarnst

Is this Jeopardy? Why are all the choices questions?

spin

The point of a poll is to show the forum's tendencies. A single vote won't change those tendencies unless there were so few voters previously to render the tendencies insignificant, but 47 voters seems to be a significant sample of active members. This means that those tendencies should be representative and the claim of insufficiency based on the lack of a single vote doesn't seem justifiable.

mountainman

That previous poll was not directed at opinion about the core of Jesus.

Historical Core Model

Here is a model of the "Historical Core of Jesus". At the core or the nucleus, is an historical jesus. Around the core there are scattered clumps and collections of both history and myth, all mixed into a primeval "scribal soup".



Mythical Core Model

I am not going to repeat the diagram, because the diagram for a model of the "Mythical Core of Jesus" would look much the same, except that in the middle, in the core, in the nucleus, is myth and not history. Around the mythical core there are also scattered clumps and collections of both history and myth, all mixed into a primeval "scribal soup".



This Poll

Attempts to ascertain a distribution of how people think about this core issue.
Is the core of the Jesus in the new testament historical or is the core mythical?

rizdek

I am of the agnostic position. I am not qualified to delve into the texts of various scriptures and ancillary writings to develop an opinion. I would not be surprised that either B or C were true. There might have been some sort of core, historical, Jesus (or someone with a similar name) who lived somewhere between 200 BC-50 CE (wide range) to whom myths were attached. Or, it might be myth all the way down. It certainly is not A...a real son of god who did all those things.

Chili

It has to be number 2 if it was iconinc and bears witness to truth with the significance of history being only in that the time was right for it 'to be' in history which is about the full extent of the Gospels. And so there was a man in history who 'lived the story' in his mind and hung it to dry in history to declare the Formal Cause of a new Religion to be called into existence and the Jews where the Material Cause wherein 'the faith' itself had to be modified into a fruit-bearing branch to be grafted upon the old trunk of Judaism wherefore then the insight of Peter was called to be the Efficient Cause of the New Religion that the visionary had in mind in the Final Cause.

We could easy call it number 3 in your poll apart from the [brotherly] affinity between Jesus and James wherein James returned to the Jews while Jesus went to the pagans whoever they may have been for as long as they were not Jew to make known the distinction between these two in that you just can nor drag a Jew into a Catholic Heaven without a lineage 'dead stop,' which of course exists in the mind of a Jew as Jew. In other words, that little big city called Nazareth in the mind of a Jew wherein the 'reign of God is contained' for a Jew must find its own origin in Rome so that Rome instead of Jerusalem can be the New Home where 'orgination' in the reign of God is found . . . simply because if the [up to a 1000 year] "reign of God is already in our midst" we must have logged that same thousand years in history for that to be true! . . . wherefore then the 'dark ages followed' the formation of this new religion called Catholic which so is not a Reformation and thus Peter became the seat of the papacy [signed sealed and delivered] since its conception in Truth when the 'shots were called' in history as presented in the Gospels by he mythmaker who called them, and called them collectively by way of eristic persuasion that was based on historic facts.

aa5874

Who needs data from last year June?