What does it matter if there was a charismatic Rabbi at the core of the mythology? The supernatural embellishments, God, salvation, blood sacrifice for the sin of the world, etc, are still myths.
Let me explain my own interest. I am NOT a Christian. And the earliest developments in more ancient religions (Judaism, Hinduism, Druidism, Norse myth, etc.) are much more interesting to ME than early Christianity.
Why then am I active in these Jesus historicity threads? Know this:
(1) I read avidly on a variety of scientific and historic topics. I read at least two books on Jesus' historicity long before I joined this message-board. We recently moved; I brought scores of printed books to our new home; and will bring scores more on next visit to our old home. And most of my reading is of on-line books and articles.
(2) I like solving puzzles! A very wide variety of puzzles: Sudoko, guessing the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel, etc. I
compose puzzles. To say much more would risk revealing my RL identity.
The consensus view of scholars,
even when restricted to non-Christian scholars, is that there WAS an historic Jesus. Am I just a slave to "scientific consensus"? I don't think so: I reject the Stratfordian authorship hypothesis; I accept Greenberg's Amerindian hypothesis; and I accept Lynne Kelly's explanation for ancient monuments like Stonehenge. In each of these cases I reject the "expert consensus." I became convinced of the Gimbutas-Mallory model of Indo-European expansion when that was still a minority view; et cetera.
But all else equal, a layman like myself should usually follow an expert consensus without strong reason not to. I read the books about Jesus because I wondered what experts could guess about the historic man. Much of the Gospel stories are obviously fiction or exaggeration; but there are specific arguments, along with applications of common-sense, which make it VERY likely some historic Jesus from Galilee was executed by order of Pontius Pilate and inspired religious cult(s). Yet it remains unclear whether that historic man was primarily an insurrectionist, a preacher, or a healer.
The "mythical Christ" cult has become prominent only recently, and still is accepted by only a tiny minority of scholars IIUC. (This is true even when the opinions of Christian scholars are ignored.) I was, frankly, rather surprised to see that this cult has such a large following here at IIDB. I engaged in debate because
I like puzzles and wondered if my own arguments could cause any changes of mind.
It was purely the intellectual thrill of understanding the arguments for and against historicity that appealed to me, not any religious experience or agenda.
During this process I discovered by myself that the James-Jesus brotherhood was the single "conundrum" which made historicity so clear-cut. I was pleased when Googling indicated that some experts had come to a similar conclusion.
I remain baffled that my arguments are not accepted here — I'm probably explaining them very poorly — and should give up.
BUT, I will mention that there are references to James 'the Just', brother of the Christ, OUTSIDE of Josephus and the canonical Bible. Hegesippus discusses James in FAR more detail than Josephus (and so does Clement), though Hegesippus' account is compatible with Josephus'. James is mentioned in other non-canonical works like the
Epistle of Peter. These mentions render the dismissals of Josephus' and Paul's mentions even more laughable. But to understand that would require common sense.
OK?
