bacht

No I don't. I favour the mythicist/mystical/gnostic position, early visionary experiences of God's Christ, with historical detail added later for mass consumption.

Larkin31

A group vision? Who had this vision? I am very curious, so that is why I am asking.

bacht

Unknown, but obvious candidates would be Peter/Cephas, James the Just or Paul. The list in 1 Corinthians 15 possibly preserves a memory of such things, but the problem is there's no way to nail down this stuff.

If you're really interested you could check out Earl Doherty's website http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/home.htm, he's a member here.

aa5874

Are you trying to claim that a religious movement can only be formed by believing a physical person is a God or is to be worshiped as a God?

Religious sects, throughout history, can be based on non-human or supernatural entities. It is not necessary at all for the worshiped entity to be human.

And further, the Egyptians worshiped animals as Gods.

The historicity of Jesus cannot be assumed because people believed he was on earth. The Marcionites believed the Phantom Jesus was on earth and ridiculed those who thought there was a real God/Man Jesus during the time of Tiberius.

Larkin31

Thanks, I will check it out....

Larkin31

I was not claiming anything. I was asking a question of another poster.

Of course not. But we are talking about Christianity in this case. At least I was.

See above.

Of course not. You seem to keep oversimplifying by moving discussions to the extremes. We are discussing inquiries into the matter, not conclusions on mere assumptions. Although it appears clear what you have already concluded. I, for one, have made no conclusions in this matter yet.

storytime

The Historical Jesus a most senseless proposition.

I totally agree.

The Dagda

WHS^

And automatically if you are a Christian you believe this story and if you are a historian you therefore believe in his historicity but something smacks of bias there.

No?

storytime

If one is a Christian historian then bias is evident I think.

There doesn't seem to be any Christian holding a theological degree that I can say is a historian. Instead, they be theologians, teachers of the myth, biased in their belief of the supernatural, the power beyond what a human is able to perform.

Jesus walks on water, but did he know how to swim?

Jesus raises to life a dead stinking corpse while some of his enemies, the Pharisees, as witnesses look on.

Jesus walks through walls and frightens his disciples, eats fish with them, then disappears out of their sight leaving the disciples to think -- WOW!, that was a really cool magic trick. Now how can we spread this magic around so that others will believe Jesus can do some terrific magic tricks.

Jesus turns water into wine. Had the Pharisees known how Jesus could have made them filthy rich in the winery business, they'd not have thought to kill him. They'd have slapped a label on his forehead and paraded him to Rome where the big money profits were.

The 500 or so corpses raised and running around Jerusalem would surely have caused at least one Pharisee to blow the whistle in Rome and to Caesar. Every single one of those living corpses would have been rounded up and taken to Rome for close observation, if not for doing some biological examinations on.

Just imagine, all those dead Jews rising up, walking around, never to die any more. Would the Romans have been scared shitless or what?

Larkin31

500 raised corpses? What is that from?