Shanefield

The Bible stories (both OT and NT) are like the King Arthur legends in England --- no real people were even closely similar to the various heroes, altho realistic-sounding details were written into the stories. An informative analogy is the Jensenhurst Parable, visible at
http://oldnnew.blogspot.com .

figuer

There are some obvious mithological episodes in the Bible, but I am inclined to believe there is much valid historical data, and also much that is half and half.

The Arthurian analogy is illustrative: Arthur, records indicate, did exist, but he wasn't king, and he wasn't English. He was a relatively unimportant Celtic Briton Warrior fighting the invading Germanic Anglo-Saxons (thus enemy of the English, who now pronounce him their first king).

In a similar way I have no problem believing there was a sort of Abraham, a Moses, a David, a Jesus, a Paul, a Peter, and that their stories were gradually embelished with heroics and fables untill they became the woderfull mithological texts that we now call the Bible.

Shanefield

So there was someone named Arthur --- so what? There was probably someone named William and one named Robert and one named Richard then, also. But not any great hero named Arthur, who actually had any of those storied adventures and knights, etc.

The Encyc. Brittania says about "King Arthur" no historical person resembling the storied hero.

It's just a myth, like Moses, Jesus, and the whole business.

premjan

I thought Arthur was a Britain-born Roman who adopted Britain at the time when the Romans retreated.

NZSkep

don't believe everything you see at the movies.
more likely, IMO, that he was a celtic warlord of some type who's stories, much like the stories about jesus, have been embelllished over thousands of tellings with magical bits so they no longer even remotely resemble the truth.

markfiend

I've even heard of one version of the "historic Arthur" hypothesis where he was (according to this version) some Roman general-turned-warlord after the collapse of the Empire somewhere in western mainland Europe, and nothing to do with Britain or England at all.

It struck me as a grabbing-at-straws hypothesis on the lines of "we can't find a historic Arthur in Britain, so let's postulate that he was on the mainland."

azidhak

As far as I recall, there was no mention of Arthur anywhere until Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae which is of itself worthless as a historical source.

Ratel

I think Nennius is the first mention, around 900 AD. Prior to that there is blurb about a general named Ambrosius that Arthur-enthusiasts like to point to as the source for the historical Arthur. In any case, there's more speculation than data on the subject.

Clivedurdle

What happened to that thing at the bottom of the page that listed related threads? I found it useful.

Toto

I think it was too much of a burden on the server. You might have noticed that the board gets overwhelmed at times.

I don't know how much money it would take to upgrade the server to get it back, but if you have a lot of money you could contribute to II, please scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on "Donate."