sotto voce

All you're asked to do is follow the discussion as recorded. No guesswork required.

Nobody would believe that anyone was a Christian who did that. People avoid becoming Christians because they know they won't be allowed even to speak critically, let alone destroy stuff.

No artefacts, then?

Vorkosigan

If you force me to speculate, I think the writer of Mark revered the ideal of the Temple as a symbol but disliked what had happened to it in the hands of the priests. Hence Jesus' death is a cleansing, spiritual renewal of the ideal of the Temple as naos and not hieron, which is the concept in Paul as I recall, where of course the writer of Mark found it. In that sense, you also read the cross as stauros through the heart of the temple.

Vorkosigan

Toto

As long as you're a mind reader

I would. Christians have destroyed a lot, including some of their own artwork and buildings that were deemed not pious enough. Here's a description of the destruction of the Temple of Serapis.

I guess you're going to claim that they were not True Christians.

Chili

Yes as literalist, but the temple is supposed to be the mind as in John, and is the place where riches are contained and the physical temple is where people like to plaster the walls with their gold and artifacts and all kind of jewels in thanksgiving of themselves from the raw gems they once were, having been shined by the church in the temple of their mind. So there are no sacrifices made here but more a sign of exess like a potlatch in abundance from all directions.

Believers are proud of their saints as even they are a 'communal effort' and is not for everone, as they well know, and is why they have patron saints that have a life-long influence on them. And Moses? he was a crook much worse than Billy Graham to lead the innocent believers into the promised land where they did not belong by parting the water to get there. It is for those that this millstone was designed, I think Jesus said, and is why Christians were tested as 'water walkers' in those days, I once heared, as they are supposed to be able to do that, like Jesus did, and told us to if we were chosen to follow his lead . . . and of course that was also done to show how wrong Moses was for parting the water.

Diogenes the Cynic

There are different answers to every on of those questions. At one extreme, the Trojan Horse was purely a literary invention of Vergil's, and I'm not aware of anyone, anywhere who tries to argue for it as historical, at the other end we have Ramesses II's actual mummy, so that's pretty definitive (and we also have the mummy of the first Ramesses).

The other examples you talk about, while not presenting an actual corpus like the Egyptians do, each still have far more corroborating evidence than Moses does, and are not hampered by the overwhelming contradictory evidence.

Diogenes the Cynic

Following your words at their most plain, you were asking me whether any other religions built things inspired by the Bible. If that was your question, then it was a very odd one.
No True Scotsman Fallacy
Who are you talking about. "Not allowed to speak critically" by who? Of what?

What rights to speak critically and/or destroy stuff are permitted to non-Christians that are not permitted to Christians?
Artifacts of what?

sotto voce

Just the actual ones.

Wikipedia?

Try Britannica.

Duvduv

Your point is far too general and abstract.

Diogenes the Cynic

OK, well to try to be more clear, my point was that the denigration of the book of Mormon as derivative and fictional is something that can be equally applied to the Bible. I was trying to divine how sotto perceives a difference in terms of historical reliability between the two bodies of literature.

Duvduv

I wasn't talking about the mummy, I was talking about a life's story as being historically true. The truth is that others besides Moses are not more or less verifiable than he was. We can extend the list if you wish.