Freethought & Rationalism Archive

archibald · 10-08-2011, 11:03 AM

Hey, he sounds even more uncannily similar.

Plus, I think it's good that he's non-Christian. As I'm sure you appreciate, there may be an imitation factor for Christian Messianic claimants since Jesus. Dale Allison dealt quite well with this, I think. He recognized it as a possible bias, so he tried to look at messianic claimants and/or eschatological prophets from around the globe, and from times before Jesus. In his eyes, Jesus (that is to say HJ) still slotted into a familiar pattern.

GakuseiDon · 10-08-2011, 11:13 AM

Admittedly I only choose those examples because they were similar.

One further point of interest: Initially he only had a few followers, and though he started when very young, it took many years for his movement to grow. Now he has millions of followers.

So a man who reportedly performed all these miracles in a relatively modern era, has millions of followers, is worshipped around the world... is virtually unknown today outside of his native country, even by people interested in religion. I doubt he appears in many history books.

Compare that with Gandhi -- no miracles and not worshipped as a god (that I know about anyway) -- but known worldwide and undoubtedly in many history books.

archibald · 10-08-2011, 11:14 AM

Another interesting figure to compare Jesus to, at this Thread

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=301903

Here, it's more of an example to favour MJ hypotheses.

Don Juan.

archibald · 10-08-2011, 11:16 AM

Toto posted this for Don Juan;

Castaneda was the 'non-fiction' author, in 1971, I think:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

The dark legacy of Don Juan

Quote:

Castaneda was viewed by many as a compelling writer, and his early books received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Time called them "beautifully lucid" and remarked on a "narrative power unmatched in other anthropological studies." They were widely accepted as factual, and this contributed to their success. Richard Jennings, an attorney who became closely involved with Castaneda in the '90s, was studying at Stanford in the early '70s when he read the first two don Juan books. "I was a searcher," he recently told Salon. "I was looking for a real path to other worlds. I wasn't looking for metaphors."

The books' status as serious anthropology went almost unchallenged for five years. Skepticism increased in 1972 after Joyce Carol Oates, in a letter to the New York Times, expressed bewilderment that a reviewer had accepted Castaneda's books as nonfiction. The next year, Time published a cover story revealing that Castaneda had lied extensively about his past. Over the next decade, several researchers, most prominently Richard de Mille, son of the legendary director, worked tirelessly to demonstrate that Castaneda's work was a hoax.

In spite of this exhaustive debunking, the don Juan books still sell well. The University of California Press, which published Castaneda's first book, "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge," in 1968, steadily sells 7,500 copies a year. BookScan, a Nielsen company that tracks book sales, reports that three of Castaneda's most popular titles, "A Separate Reality," "Journey to Ixtlan" and "Tales of Power," sold a total of 10,000 copies in 2006. None of Castaneda's titles have ever gone out of print -- an impressive achievement for any author.

Today, Simon and Schuster, Castaneda's main publisher, still classifies his books as nonfiction. It could be argued that this label doesn't matter since everyone now knows don Juan was a fictional creation. But everyone doesn't . . .

archibald · 10-08-2011, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Admittedly I only choose those examples because they were similar.

One further point of interest: Initially he only had a few followers, and though he started when very young, it took many years for his movement to grow. Now he has millions of followers.

So a man who reportedly performed all these miracles in a relatively modern era, has millions of followers, is worshipped around the world... is virtually unknown today outside of his native country, even by people interested in religion. I doubt he appears in many history books.

I think it's perfectly permissible to look for parallels and comparisons. He seems to be a very interesting comparison indeed.

GakuseiDon · 10-08-2011, 11:27 AM

Another useful -- though non-human -- example might be the Angels of Mons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Mons

Quote:

The Angels of Mons is a popular legend about a group of angels who supposedly protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I. The story is fictitious, developed through a combination of a patriotic short story by Arthur Machen, rumours, mass hysteria and urban legend, claimed visions[citation needed] after the battle and also possibly deliberately seeded propaganda...

On 29 September 1914, Welsh author Arthur Machen published a short story entitled “The Bowmen” in the London newspaper The Evening News, inspired by accounts that he had read of the fighting at Mons and an idea he had had soon after the battle...

Around that time variants of the story began to appear, told as authentic histories, including a variant which told how dead German soldiers had been found on the battlefield with arrow wounds...

In May 1915, a full blown controversy was erupting, with the angels being used of proof of the action of divine providence on the side of the Allies in sermons across Britain, and then spreading into newspaper reports published widely across the world. Machen, bemused by all this, attempted to end the rumours by republishing the story in August in book form, with a long preface stating the rumours were false and originated in his story. It became a bestseller, and resulted in a vast series of other publications claiming to provide evidence of the Angels' existence.[1] Machen tried to set the record straight, but any attempt to lessen the impact of such an inspiring story was seen as bordering on treason by some. These new publications included popular songs and artists' renderings of the angels. There were more reports of angels and apparitions from the front including Joan of Arc...

archibald · 10-08-2011, 11:34 AM

Also, for anyone interested in doing comparisons (and I think it's fair to say that we may already have some interesting ones for both 'sides'), Iskander posted a very interesting page from wiki on another thread. And I know mountaiman expressed an interest in doing comparisons recently.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskander

List of people who have been considered deities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...idered_deities

There may be interesting examples of all sorts on that list. I intend to read it later on. Presumably the bias will be towards 'actual peole' (and as such may be a limitation), but I wonder who's in there, nonetheless?

Moving away from deities, there's Socrates as well, of course. Did he exist? Does he offer any comparisons?

Probably better if this thread casts a wide net, rather than getting into one specific comparison exclusively.

I wonder if we'll arrive at a conclusion that neither 'sort' is unusual?

Interested to hear more of Appolonius of Tyre 'replacing' a spirit, or whatever Horatio was aiming at.

OLDMAN · 10-08-2011, 11:41 AM

I think the biggest indicator that HJ may have been is all the mistakes in the NT. If it were just one story retold, one would think it would have been cleaned up alot more than it appears to have been.

archibald · 10-08-2011, 11:45 AM

Cool. That's a different take. Some have said the contradictions point to an MJ. But as you say, maybe it could be argued in the opposite direction.

Sheshbazzar · 10-08-2011, 12:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OLDMAN

I think the biggest indicator that HJ may have been is all the mistakes in the NT. If it were just one story retold, one would think it would have been cleaned up alot more than it appears to have been.

Or a dozen different Christ/Chrest cults each vying for their sects preferred traditional 'story' finally shakes out to four heavily edited versions.
Everybody's happy. er... If they're not, then they're Heretics!

And you should know what happened to heretics.

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10-08-2011, 11:03 AM	#11
archibald Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Northern Ireland Posts: 1,305	Hey, he sounds even more uncannily similar. Plus, I think it's good that he's non-Christian. As I'm sure you appreciate, there may be an imitation factor for Christian Messianic claimants since Jesus. Dale Allison dealt quite well with this, I think. He recognized it as a possible bias, so he tried to look at messianic claimants and/or eschatological prophets from around the globe, and from times before Jesus. In his eyes, Jesus (that is to say HJ) still slotted into a familiar pattern.

10-08-2011, 11:13 AM	#12
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Admittedly I only choose those examples because they were similar. One further point of interest: Initially he only had a few followers, and though he started when very young, it took many years for his movement to grow. Now he has millions of followers. So a man who reportedly performed all these miracles in a relatively modern era, has millions of followers, is worshipped around the world... is virtually unknown today outside of his native country, even by people interested in religion. I doubt he appears in many history books. Compare that with Gandhi -- no miracles and not worshipped as a god (that I know about anyway) -- but known worldwide and undoubtedly in many history books.

10-08-2011, 11:14 AM	#13
archibald Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Northern Ireland Posts: 1,305	Another interesting figure to compare Jesus to, at this Thread http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=301903 Here, it's more of an example to favour MJ hypotheses. Don Juan.

10-08-2011, 11:41 AM	#18
OLDMAN Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: look behind you... Posts: 2,107	I think the biggest indicator that HJ may have been is all the mistakes in the NT. If it were just one story retold, one would think it would have been cleaned up alot more than it appears to have been.

10-08-2011, 11:45 AM	#19
archibald Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Northern Ireland Posts: 1,305	Cool. That's a different take. Some have said the contradictions point to an MJ. But as you say, maybe it could be argued in the opposite direction.

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