Doug Shaver

And yet, according to the earliest known Christian writings (the Pauline corpus), within a coujple of decades of his death, a Jewish sect was talking about him as if he were a god. How did that happen, if he was such a nobody during his lifetime?

Just what did he do that convinced some of his disciples that he was God incarnate? And whatever that was, how do we know that he did it?

Doug Shaver

You'll have to show us how it applies to Shakespeare.

I've done some reading about the evidence for Shakespeare. So far as I can tell, there is no analogy with the evidence for Jesus.

Elijah

This doesn’t do anything for what I am talking about that I can tell. Your difficulty in labeling/distinguishing of a species doesn’t have anything do with genetic change or a first to a species. Like I said the whole species is a mental construct so there could be no first to us sounds like pot talk to me. “There are no people really cause people is just a word we made up man.”
They thought he was the messiah, not a god, because he was convinced he was such. Conviction is contagious as in the sign of Jonah. Selling him to the public as the good king they were waiting for to bring about a time of peace was a hard sell so exaggerations were made and symbolically/metaphorically speaking was taken literal later/now.
He sacrificed his life. That sacrifice was imitated by Stephen which convinced Paul, like the self sacrifice of later martyrs got the attention of those in Rome. The message of Christ was spread with the meme of self sacrifice.

No Robots

There is a vocal movement claiming that Shakespeare is a myth. See Oxfordian theory.

Ben C Smith

Is this not a slight distortion of the movement? I do not think any Oxfordian (or any Baconian) doubts that an actor named William Shakespeare lived and died during the period in question. I think what is at issue is whether it was he who wrote the plays.

Or are there some who think even the actor did not exist?

Ben.

No Robots

I am not overly familiar with this subject, but I am sure we would see in the Shakespeare-myth camp endless permutations, flavours, nuances, qualifications and hairsplitting similar to those we find with Christ-mythicism. Maybe it would be fair to say that most Shakespeare-mythicists hold that there was an actor named Shakespeare, but not a playwright. This is consistent with the position of many Christ-mythicists who say that there may have been a preacher, but there is no proof that he bears any strong resemblance to the man described in the Gospels.

Amaleq13

Agreed. It is a distracting tangent.

It isn't his difficulty but simply an acknowledgement of the fact that the definition of what constitutes a "species" is largely subjective.

All living entities are made of the same stuff but in different forms. Some forms appear more similar to each other than others. Some forms are capable of breeding with each other and not others. We tend to call those that appear similar and can interbreed a unique species but there is no clear dividing line.

I suspect that is only because you haven't studied enough of the relevant science. Species refers to groups rather than individuals. You don't have monkey-monkey-monkey-man. You have "what we call monkey"-"what we call monkey"-"some that seem a little different from what we call monkey"-"some that seem even more different from what we call monkey"-"this thing is different enough from what we call monkey that we need to give it a different name".

Do you understand that such a scenario makes it problematic to identify the "first"?

No Robots

The species concept is what allows man to navigate the continuum of the biosphere, just as the element concept allows man to navigate the continuum of matter. The species are just as real as the elements. Species are expressions of unique and eternal form. Thus Adam in the Bible is not the first man, but Man. Here is how Hegel puts it:

There is essentially understanding in Nature. Nature's formations are determinate, bounded, and enter as such into existence. So that even if the earth was once in a state where it had no living things but only the chemical process, and so on, yet the moment the lightning of life strikes into matter, at once there is present a determinate, complete creature, as Minerva fully armed springs forth from the head of Jupiter. The Mosaic story of creation is still the best in its quite naïve statement that on this day plants came into being, on another day the animals, and on another day man. Man has not developed himself out of the animal, nor the animal out of the plant; each is at a single stroke what it is. In this individual, evolutionary changes do occur : at birth it is not yet complete, but is already the real possibility of all it is to become. The living thing is the point, this particular soul (Seele), subjectivity, infinite form, and thus immediately determined in and for itself. Already in the crystal, as a point, the entire shape is at once present, the totality of the form ; the crystal's capacity for growth is only a quantitative alteration. Still more is this the case in the living thing.--Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, p. 284.

Amaleq13

And that is utter nonsense with no connection to reality.

No Robots

Perhaps I should say that species, like elements, are expressions of unique and eternal form. I do not mean that the expression, the physical manifestation is eternal; but that the idea is eternal, just as the idea of the triangle is eternal.