@bilby -- Do you agree with the revisionist view that Tacitus wrote about the Chrestians, who were allegedly a completely different sect from the Christians, though later Christian apologists might have usurped the evidence for "Chrestians" as their own?
-- Or are you more inclined to the parsimonious solution that the Chrestians and the Christians were the same?
I am not sufficiently interested in early Christianity to have an opinion.
Fair enough.
It seems unlikely that there were two totally unrelated cults with very similar names simultaneously,
... but it's still nice to see you tending toward a common-sense view. The Carrierists go through contortions to support their extreme mythicism.
but I don't care to investigate the matter.
I assume that Jesus is a pastiche, and that most of his story is fiction, and some parts happened to different people whose tales got amalgamated, while other parts didn't happen at all. But frankly I don't understand why people seem to care so much.
I never cared much. Decades ago I skimmed a book or two to understand the topic -- and confirmed to my satisfaction that historicity in the defined limited sense was very probable -- and went on to unrelated things.
Unless they have a religious axe to grind, of course.
Not from me of course.
It's not my period of history, and even scholars of the period have very scant evidence compared to the vast wealth of documentary sources from the Early Modern period, in which I take a much greater interest.
To each his own. I'm intrigued by Bronze Age history and the very early Iron Age. The troves of documentation from late medieval Italy and early modern England are also fascinating: I've acquainted myself with many of the issues associated with the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
I was never a Christian, so perhaps that's why I am baffled by the level of passion (pun intended) that this story evokes amongst Christian (and ex-Christian) scholars.
It was decades ago that I skimmed
Jesus, the Evidence and such, deciding that the historicity question lacked further interest from me.
It was on this very message-board, where I read about mythicism, esp. Carrierism, that my interest was re-AROUSED. WHY did people adopt the counter-intuitive non-historic position?? I investigated briefly, posed queries at this very message-board and elsewhere, and concluded that the Carrierists were crackpots. With this additional effort it became clear to me that the case for historicity was MUCH STRONGER than I'd already thought. (Of course I refer to the limited historicity defined by, e.g. Carrier himself.)
My remaining interest is just to offer the -- admittedly futile! -- chore of fighting ignorance. It baffles me that participants in the threads have apparently spent no time considering the topic, yet are happy to spend hours arguing for wrong-headed positions.
@bilby -- I know you are very intelligent. I imagine that if you spent a few hours seriously pursuing the evidence your opinion on the historicity question might resemble the consensus followed by myself
and almost all relevant scholars. Kudos for not wasting the hours! I have little excuse for the time I waste on this beaten-to-death topic -- it may be another symptom of my "autism."
The case is very similar to the SAQ where it seems almost certain that Oxford wrote the plays and sonnets. I've thought of writing my own summary of the evidence and arguments there, but that would be redundant. Meanwhile my interest focuses on people remaining willfully ignorant and following the traditional but wrong view. Why do intelligent people with adequate common sense not spend the few hours needed to get a sincere understanding of Oxfordian arguments, and instead argue incessantly out of ignorance?
The Roman history I am interested by has early Christianity as a minor element, of very limited importance, until the second or third centuries. To focus on that small but growing cult seems to me to miss the big picture.
As I stated above there are other historic eras that interest me more. For example, I've spent several hours reading about the "mysterious" development of banking in medieval Europe but without reaching fully complete conclusions. I also like to read about the pre-modern developments of math and physics.
Nevertheless, I'd object mildly to your characterization of "a small cult ... of limited importance." Christianity had strong and rapid effects on world civilization, second only to Islam among well-defined religions. (And Islam itself treated Jesus as one of the great prophets.)
