spamandham

I don't know enough about Shakespeare to argue one way or the other. The question is a matter of point, not fact about Shakespeare. In general, if there is reason to suspect some figure is mythical - even if that figure has long been believed to have been historical - is there a reason not to go down that path?


Many people find it hooey, but what's dangerous about it?

No Robots

It is a gross distortion of the truth about a fundamental aspect of our culture. It represents a distorted understanding of history, literature, oneself and one's fellow men. Teaching people that Christ was never a man is like teaching people that it's okay to drink gasoline.

bacht

I dunno Elijah. There was a lot of self-sacrifice and death in the years before the fall of the temple. If Jesus simply died for his beliefs he was hardly unique. There were lots of martyrs in the Jewish tradition already, like the Maccabbees.

eheffa

Sorry Elijah,

Your position that the "real historical" Jesus was merely some simple peasant with delusions of grandeur and that any notions of him being more than this is some sort of "cartoon-like" distorition is not rational or reasonable. If the real HJ was no more than an unremarkable Galilean peasant, there is no reason to concern ourselves over his existence. There would be perhaps thousand of such peasants over the course of Palestinian History. You make him into a non-entity for which historicity means nothing. On the other hand the orthodox teachings of Christians & the Church at large have always maintained that this God-Man was in reality far more than some simple peasant. They claim that the HJ said & did all those things recorded so faithfully for us in the NT Gospels because he was God Incarnate breaking into history for all the world to see. (This is not the story of some anonymous unremarkable peasant.)

Is there any evidence that such a man, even in some schematic or diminished sense ever lived during the time of Pontius Pilate? Why should we expect there to be any specific evidence for such a man? Because if he were even half asvremarkable as we are supposed to believe he was, he would have had to be noticed by some contemporaries.

How is it that this Man-God Jesus person and his first century followers fail to be noticed by the true historians of the era? To read the gospels, one would have thought that this Jesus Messiah was the talk of the town; what with the crowds cheering his triumphal entry parade, his public humiliation before the Sanhedrin & Pontius Pilate. One would think that his public execution on the holiest holiday of the Jewish calendar & the resulting omens of earthquakes, the darkened earth, the dead brought to life & walking the streets of Jerusalem etc. might have caught even the most cynical & jaded observer's notice.

According to the Book of Acts, after Jesus' public ascension into the sky, his followers supposedly turned the Jewish religious landscape upside down as their dynamic spirit-filled movement gathered momentum. The mass conversions were happening on a grand scale & provoking a strong backlash from the Jewish establishment. Roman authorities were being appealed to in order to quash this disruptive cult. All this was happening prior to the fall of Jerusalem, but somehow Josephus & others failed to notice any of this....:huh:

Josephus & Philo pay attention to much smaller details & many less compelling characters in their histories & somehow fail to even notice the existence of this very public messiah figure. ( The Testimonium Flavium cannot be used as evidence as it is almost certainly an interpolation.) It just doesn't make any sense that these historians would not have noticed the existence of this messiah figure & his supposedly vigorous & disruptive followers - unless of course the Gospel accounts are post-hoc legend.

In this case, the absence of evidence is a strong indicator of absence. The evidence of contemporaneous ignorance of Jesus is best explained by a mythical Jesus invented later by his fabricating followers.

-evan

No Robots

How long after Van Gogh's death did his first painting sell?

aa5874

I interpret the Jesus of the NT as fiction or a LITERAL myth.

You are the one who interpreted Jesus of the NT as LITERAL . You actualy believe Jesus of the NT, the cartoon-like character as you call him, LITERALLY was on earth during the time of Tiberius and did many of the things as written.

You believe the cartoon-like character was real .

You are totally confused, you seem not to know or remember that you are the one who have been actively propagating that the cartoon character lived.

I have always maintained that cartoon-like characters, just like Jesus of the NT, are fiction.

spamandham

None of this makes any sense if Jesus never actually existed. There's nothing particularly unreasonable with the idea that a half man half god never walked the earth. This is hardly the same as teaching people to drink gasoline.

No Robots

No, there isn't. But there is something unreasonable with the idea that this man never walked the earth. That he was mythologized, even deified, is in keeping with many other heroic figures whose historicity is never challenged.

I am sure that you would agree that the distorted understanding found in religion has led to great suffering. All I am saying is that mythicism is a different kind of distortion, but a distortion none the less, and one that produces anguish by convincing people to stop looking to Christ for help in facing life's difficulties.

spamandham

Jesus is not presented as just a man in the earliest texts, and the fantastic elements associated with him are central to his character rather than mere window dressing. It is as reasonable to question the historicity of Jesus, just as it is reasonable to question the historicity of Asclepius, Apollonius, Romulus, and Hercules. There may be a historical core to any of these, but we don't know that a priori.

The Christ aspect of Jesus is most certainly myth. He certainly was not the Jewish savior, a Jewish king, nor an actual nab god. We don't know a priori that the rest is not also myth.

Merely claiming that mythicism is unreasonable is not an argument. It makes at least as much sense a man who was not remarkable enough to be recorded by his peers nonetheless being turned into a god later on.

We know myths exist. We know some myths have been regarded as history to some people. There is nothing even slightly unreasonable with the idea that Jesus never existed, just as there is nothing unreasonable with the idea that Adam, Abraham, Elijah, Noah, and Moses never existed.

Elijah

Yes I understand that it is problematic and subjective depending on the reason used but that doesn’t negate a first.
Debatable about “lots of martyrs” or how many of those sacrifices were self induced and how many were choosing death before dishonor or torture from their enemies. Depends on how you use the word martyr, but regardless what Jesus did was with intent to be imitated and that imitation is what carried the conviction forward. People still use the claim of why would the early followers die for a lie and it was that willingness to die then from Christians that was so convincing about Christ.