Juma

I mean: Its obvious that the figure in the NT is mythical: what he does is impossible. What he says is copied from others. Whether he is or is not based on a real man seems rather off the point: We already have indications that some of the persons in the story really existed. But to think that jesus , as described in NTreally existed is just so naive...
And whether the story was based on some or other real person...just doesnt matter.

No Robots

Many people here justify giving their attention to this matter by claiming that they hope to destroy the Christian religion by proving that Jesus is purely mythical.

general_koffi

It's more of a sidetrack discussion than anything else.

Even if one could prove that Jesus never existed, it wouldn't stop Christians from deluding themselves.

Toto

It is always dangerous to speculate about motives.

There are people (Freke and Gandy) who hope to reform the Christian religion by showing that Jesus was mythical. There may be people who want to destroy the Christian religion, or at least the fundamentalist version of it. And there are people who are just interested in the historical and sociological questions involved in how new religions are formed and become dominant.

The particular Historical Jesus that is under discussion is not the Gospel Jesus, but an attempt by the Enlightenment to find a historical basis behind that gospel Jesus.

jjramsey

There is also a concern among the HJers that the MJers are doing pseudohistory.

Paul2

Without Jesus, then we're all doomed to hell. Jesus existing is the foundation of Christianity. So of course it's important. If Jesus didn't exist, then the Bible is not true, then there is no god, thus no morals, no republicans, and no heavenly barbque.

PopeInTheWoods

Is there a corresponding belief among the MJers that the HJers have done almost two millenia of pseudohistory?

RUmike

I personally like the study of/for the historical Jesus so that when Christians say to me "Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life'", I can confidently say back to them, "No he didn't"

jjramsey

I have in mind the more secular HJers, who tend to argue about kata sarka, the ad hoc ways of explaining away the references to Jesus' brothers, etc.

Toto

Yes indeed there is. Many of the Christian foundational documents cannot be shown to be other than fiction or forgery. Allegorical references, such as to "the Brother of the Lord" are given concrete meanings that the author never meant. Documents such as the gospel of Mark that do not show up in the record before the middle of the second century are arbitrarily dated to closer to the middle of the first century, solely to argue for a historical basis for the obviously literary myth.