Toto

This is not the common meaning of "religious extremists," unless every religious person is an extremist.

Not everyone who reads the gospels concludes that Jesus, Peter or Paul existed. Today, Jesus is widely believed to be "historical" because of the efforts of deists and Enlightenment thinkers who extracted a historical core from the gospels.

Was anyone who killed other Christians in those religious wars specifically inspired by a historical Jesus, as opposed to a supernatural Jesus, or the words of some priest who claimed that God wanted them to kill, or some territorial claim?

Only some beliefs. We all believe a lot of things today that we didn't 20 years ago. Christians believe a lot of things today that they didn't 20 years ago.

archibald

I'll be happy to start a new thread.

Will you respond there?

On the face of it, you appear to have stated a large inconsistency on this thread, which has gotten me all curious, and whilst I am always ready to admit I've got something wrong, I have to say that your answers have not been very clear, and perhaps even sound like evasion. Though I will retract that if I'm wrong.

C'mon. Threads deviate a little here and there. You've had these things on your mind for 30 years. You can manage a few extra posts!





Edit: Forget it. I just googled Stephan Huller and his book.

If that's the kind of material you're citing, Ciao. Best of luck with the next 30 years.

GakuseiDon

Mary, you don't appear to be interacting with what I am actually writing, so like TedM and archibald I think I'll leave it as is. Thanks for your time.

MCalavera

I agree with this.

MCalavera

To be honest, it's not really worth putting much effort into showing how wrong the other side is. It's like debating the facts of evolution with creationists.

I read the article last night. And your hunch was right: I don't agree with his conclusions at all.

MCalavera

Exactly.

I personally couldn't care less if Jesus really was a mythical character and nothing more. I just want strong solid arguments from these mythicists that destroy the strong wall of evidence supporting the position that Jesus was a real historical figure.

MCalavera

Do you seriously think that's what I'm arguing?

I'm arguing that Paul himself considered Jesus to be a historical figure because he treated whatever he said about Jesus as facts (not myths) IN COMBINATION WITH the fact he basically said he was a man born as a man, lived as a man, and died as a man.

Yeah, I know, "flesh" means something different to you. But it does not mean you're right.

Horatio Parker

That people believe that their spiritual salvation lies in the supernatural is a result of their education.

Give them a better spiritual education.

Granted, it isn't easy. OTOH, the current system is increasingly irrelevant.

MCalavera

Marcion was a rebel. And I did say "Apostles", not just disciples.

Yeah, some count them as Apostles, but those two were not included in the group of Apostles as mentioned in the Bible.

The evidence is in the Epistles. So no need for Clement to add anything to what the Epistles already say.

Toto

There is no "strong wall of evidence" indicating that Jesus was a real historical figure. The best you have are ambiguous phrases from Christian documents from after the time that Jesus presumably lived, that have been subject to forgery and interpolation. If you are going with the evidence, you should be agnostic on the question of a historical Jesus.

Note that Doherty does not take the easy way out and argue that all the references to Jesus being born of woman, or in the flesh, are interpolations. But they all very well could be. Our manuscripts of Paul's letters are late, and cannot be reliably dated or authenticated.