gurugeorge

I was talking mainly about "founders" there, trying to account for the charisma and momentum that founders have. It's the inner certainty of seeming to have been in touch with an entity of great wisdom and compassion that gives people the charisma that attracts followers. And as I say, it's pretty clear that most religions start with something that feels like a communication from a discarnate intelligence, or a mystical experience of great profundity, or some combination of both. (To take a handful: Islam, Hindu and Buddhist Tantric systems, Shangqing Daoism, large chunks of the Bible, etc., etc.) In its "raw" form, this "communication" can be seen in Shamanism of all sorts - even, I was reading recently, about Sidh magic, a Celtic form of "communication with the spirits" that has been reconstructed from some of the scant textual evidence that exists, in which someone "took the high seat" took questions from the audience and went into a trance, communicated the spirits' answers to the questions.

Some of the followers will, indeed, partake of the founder's (or founders') vision, but there will be a dilution effect, and eventually (as Robert M. Price outlines somewhere) you get that process whereby the original, fairly strict ways of life recommended by the founder in order to get the kinds of experiences he or she had, are diluted, made palatable to the larger and larger numbers of ordinary people joining in the religion.

As to the ones you quote, I only know offhand about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (or Osho as he was later known), and for sure many of his followers had some quite profound mystical experiences - and since he died, many of them have gone on to continue their training with other teachers. (The Osho "diaspora" is quite a well-known thing in New Age circles.) But his teaching was specifically oriented around getting his students into non-dual states of being, so that's not surprising.

Amaleq13

Nope, I don't know of any.

Rick Sumner

This is rather weighted language. To suggest it's a "coalition" implies that they are fighting some common foe. They aren't. The vast majority of "historicists" have no idea that mythicism exists in any meaningful form.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Unbeliever

Right, because that Jesus couldn't have risen from the dead, and as Paul said, if Jesus didn't resurrect then "our faith is in vain."

J-D

I wasn't talking about Roland, I was talking about Jesus, and referring to the fact that people write whole books attempting to reconstruct a historical version stripped of myth--as should (have been)/(be) clear if you (had clicked)/(click) on the link.

J-D

1. There's nothing unfortunate about it. On the contrary, in my personal opinion.

2. It's not only Christians who put him forward, or who are interested in him, and the other people involved are not attempting a confusion with the Gospel Jesus.

J-D

The way it seems to me, however, is that there are also people who lay claim to the same sort of mystically profound experience but who fail to attract the same sort of following. So I don't think it's a complete explanation.

J-D

Which is why I am sceptical of this model for the origin of Christianity. I don't say it's impossible; just that it strikes me as less plausible than the single-founder alternative (for which there are historically recorded parallels).

gurugeorge

Good point. But actually I would go so far as to say, if they aren't charismatic, if people don't find them fascinating and don't want to be with them, then they can't have had the experience, even though they may claim it.

(OTOH, they might be charismatic but not want followers, not want to be involved in public religion.)

Alf

In that case they do not talk about the historical Jesus - nor can they as we know absolutely zip about him. He is long forgotten. The only Jesus that is left is the mythical Jesus of the gospels who never existed. So people who write about a "historical Jesus" are simply spinning a "what could have happen" into a "it did happen" speculation. This is on the whole very unprofessional for serious historians to do.

Just because some obscure rabbi/preacher named Yeshu who got crucified COULD have been the start of christianity we cannot really draw the conclusion that it really DID happen this way and we can above all not say much more than that about this individual. Anything beyond that is pure speculation.

The people who are interested in books of this kind are apologists who want you to acept that this obscure individual existed is equivalent to their claim that a divine 100 percent man and 100 percent god gospel Jesus existed and can save your soul if you just believe in him. Oh yeah, maybe one or other confused historian or wanna-be historian is also interested in him because "he founded a very popular religion of our time". However, as anything about him beyond what I already said is speculation any such interest is pointless.

The historical Jesus might have existed but he is long forgotten and we have absolutely zip from him or about him anywhere. No letter from him to his mom, no diary, no letter from a rabbi who disagree with his teaching warning people not to listen to him etc etc. zip, nada, nil. He might have existed but he might as well have not as we have nothing from him or about him. The only thing we have is the gospel Jesus who never existed and is pure fiction.

Alf