The Christ Myth Theory

[dbz]

By authenticity I mean proof of existence.

• A smoking gun of apologetic crankery for historicity is repeating this canard: According to Classical historian and popular author Michael Grant, if the same criterium [for Yesus] is applied to others: "We can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned"

[...I] devote an entire chapter in JFOS to what I call the “Argument from Spartacus,” which manifests as an insistence that “we have as much or more evidence for Jesus as we have for [ … ],” where at [ … ] we find somewhere inserted not only Spartacus, but Tiberius, Alexander the Great, Socrates, Pontius Pilate, Herod Agrippa, Hannibal, Caligula, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and even Julius Caesar. I show none of these claims are true. It is perplexing that scholars making such claims don’t know this—and evidently didn’t even think to check. To remedy that, I show why we are so certain of the existence of such historical persons as these and why we have nowhere near the same kind, quantity, or quality of evidence for Jesus. I also explain why we shouldn’t be treating Jesus—a worshiped, preexistent savior deity who launched his religion through mystic revelations and whose earliest historical accounts are elaborately mythical—as if he were like any mundane political or military leader about whom none of those things are the case.

Yet those things happen to be the very ones that warrant doubting the historicity of personages more similar to Jesus, so I devote another chapter to illustrating that in JFOS as well: Osiris, Aesop, Romulus, Hercules, Dionysus, Adonis, Baal, Inanna, Zalmoxis, even Moses and the Patriarchs. I show how the Gospels established Jesus with more tropes (pagan and Jewish) peculiar to mythical people than any other attested person from antiquity. We cannot dismiss that observation as irrelevant. We need some exceptional evidence to conclude Jesus is the exception to all these other equally mythologized figures—just as we would need to be assured of the historicity of any of them. And yet for Jesus, we just don’t have any evidence near that secure—whereas for all the figures inserted into any Argument from Spartacus, we do. And yet, they don’t share markers of being mythical comparable in scale or scope to what we have for Jesus. This would warrant suspicion for any other person—and would for Jesus, too, if he weren’t the object of a major, powerful, socially influential religion today. Doubting his existence comes at a social and professional cost that cannot be claimed for Homer or even Confucius. Admitting this is the first step to overcoming it.

Carrier, Richard (2020). "Jesus from Outer Space?". The Bible and Interpretation.​

 

[dbz]

• "How Scholars Know Jesus Lived - Dr. M. David Litwa". YouTube. History Valley. 22 February 2022.

"M. David Litwa is Wrong About The Ascension Of Isaiah w/ Dr. Carrier". YouTube. Godless Engineer. 15 October 2022.

Litwa literally doesn’t know anything he is talking about. Yet he arrogantly—and dishonestly—represents himself as a studied expert. This is shameful and immoral—and extremely angering. He doesn’t even know what Enrico Norelli argued, or my rebuttals to it, despite complaining that one ought to know those things; he lies about my not referencing Norelli or responding to his arguments; he doesn’t know what my thesis is, or anything I argue or documented under peer review about this subject; he has completely garbled and amateur notions about the Ascension of Isaiah as a text; he has completely incorrect notions of how Mythicists see and employ this text; he doesn’t know anything about ancient cosmology, yet pretends to, and in result, lies about it; and he doesn’t know any of the arguments by multiple scholars (including myself) across the peer-reviewed literature, or any of the evidence they rest on, as to why most of us reject Norelli’s fanciful conjectures about this text. I don’t think Litwa even knows what Norelli’s arguments are. He certainly doesn’t know anyone else’s. Scholars ought to be moral and honorable, and skilled and competent, and therefore well know that they should not weigh in on things they know they have not studied, much less make confident assertions about them. As just one more example of countless, this illustrates, yet again, a pervasive lack of ethics, and of epistemic standards, in Jesus studies.

Carrier (16 October 2022). "M. David Litwa, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Problem of Incompetent Scholarship". Richard Carrier Blogs.​

 

[steve_bank]

Even if there was an HJ there is still no contemporaneous accounts of what he did and who he was. It is all hear say after the fact.

Plato nd Aristotle were known figures in their time. They left coherent writings.

The gospels are a jumble of unconcerned sayings attributed to someone named Jesus. As I said the paucity of definition allows the modern Chistian to make Jesus into whatever he or she needs him to be.

 

[dbz]

The gospels are a jumble of unconcerned sayings attributed to someone named Jesus. As I said the paucity of definition allows the modern Chistian to make Jesus into whatever he or she needs him to be.

Modern Christianity must always reckon with the possibility of having to abandon the historical figure of Jesus … he should never be considered its foundation.

—Albert Schweitzer[2][3]

 

[steve_bank]

On q religion show I watched a Jewish rabbi was asked whether god exists or not. He said it did not matter.

The reality of Jesus is not important as useful myth that can benefit people.

The problem is the singular Christian obsession with proselytizing based on an interpretation of the gospels.

The belief based in scripture of an absolute moral authority from a god that has led to thousands of years of oppression by Christians. Historically the biggest threat to a Christian is other Christians.

That is why I participate here. What someone believes is not my concern. The aggressive Christians are intrusive and hostile to atheists like myself and others. They are obcessed with making law to reflect faith, a theocracy.

So I debate the basis of Christianity because it has to be done. Here in the USA Jews, Hindus, and Muslims do not represent any such threat to other citizens.

Jews in particular practice their faith and rituals without imposing on anyone else. They are a threat to no one, yet remain at the top of the hate crime list. Anti semtism sprngs from Chrtianity going back to the 1st century.

 

[Jarhyn]

I will point out that there are very few historical accounts about people who were not wealthy, or attached to wealth and power, in antiquity.

Literacy was not accessible to any but the elite, let alone inks and parchment.

Historical events happening to "nobodies" or mostly involving "nobodies" or even just only important to "nobodies" in that context usually amount to "records cults kept about their prophets" and "shit that gets retained only by oral transfer for often centuries before someone who knows how to write and has access to the tools to do it manages to scrawl something down." Or even just "rude graffiti".

Stories about peasants are going to look different in the historical record, and bear more mythological elements more quickly owing to the corruptive force of delay in recording and the subsequent game of telephone, not to mention getting mixed with all the other similar accounts of similar people getting confused and stirred in.

 

[dbz]

Historical events happening to "nobodies" or mostly involving "nobodies" or even just only important to "nobodies"...

Reminds me of:

Per the question: Why did the contemporary Jewish writers mention nothing whatsoever about a historical Jesus?

The question is answered by Brunner, Constantin (1921). Unser Christus: oder Das Wesen des Genies (in German) and (1990 in English) Rappaport, A. M. (ed.). Our Christ : the revolt of the mystical genius. Translated by Harrison, Graham; Wex, Michael. ISBN 90-232-2412-4.

[The contemporary Jewish writers] were aware of nothing but the insolence of this charlatan, this harlot’s son — if that . . . So the silence of the Jewish writers is understandable. Philo . . . says nothing about him . . . Josephus, born in Jerusalem in 34 A.D. —he too says not a word . . . Christ was entirely a-political. He played no political part and never used the methods of demagogy. Consequently, there was no reason to speak of him in the same terms as Judas the Galilean or Bar Kochba. (p. 275f)

Harry Waton echoes Brunner:

About two thousand years ago, somewhere in a small country and among a small people, a man appeared by the name of Jesus. He was a poor carpenter and an ordinary man; he was not educated at the schools, he did not know of the philosophies of his time, and he had no connections with influential people. This poor carpenter took it into his head the idea that he was called into existence to bring salvation to mankind. What a pipe dream! What intelligent person would listen to him! The scholars, the philosophers and the wise men either ignored him or they ridiculed him with his pipe dreams. And so he went to the poor, the ignorant, fishermen, beggars, the unwashed and the unkempt, and preached to them the gospel of salvation: the kingdom of God is at hand. These poor, ignorant and derelicts of society, who had nothing to lose, listened to Jesus. They did not understand what he was talking to them, but they liked him and they followed him. Suppose the philosophers and the scholars would listen to him, would they see anything in his pipe dreams? They would regard him as crazy and would pay to him and his pipe dreams no attention. Yet what followed? By the fruit ye shall know. Half of the human race, constituting the Christian world, already follow that poor carpenter; and in due time the rest of mankind will follow him. And how strange and wonderful it is that, since Christianity was recognized by Constantine, countless millions of Christians—philosophers, scholars, poets, as well as ordinary men, discovered profound, sublime and divine truths and wisdom in the utterances of Jesus, the poor carpenter— utterances which the philosophers and the scholars despised and rejected. Verily, the stone which the builders despised and rejected became the chief corner stone of modern civilization.

 

[dbz]

By authenticity I mean proof of existence.

• A smoking gun of apologetic crankery for historicity is repeating this canard: According to Classical historian and popular author Michael Grant, if the same criterium [for Yesus] is applied to others: "We can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned"

Another smoking gun of apologetic crankery for historicity is the dogmatic declaration: Christianity did not originate from an amalgam of figures.

• The apex of this is the dogmatic declaration that .. Josephus attests a specific Yesus and time period who was
  

  "nobodies" or mostly involving "nobodies" or even just only important to "nobodies"

  BUT this is obviously, obviously, obviously an exception. Even though Josephus attests multiple Yesus Messiahs.

Trigger Warning: The arch-crank for historicity will often have a brain aneurysm per the following:

Christianity began after a sequence of events: 1. various prominent leader deaths; 2. subsequently having a number of competing narratives spun by Jewish Pharisee and Sadducee interests, and then 3. by an amalgamist-mythicist process that resulted in the cross-fertilization of these myths about various persons.[24]

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Carrier (16 October 2022). "M. David Litwa, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Problem of Incompetent Scholarship". Richard Carrier Blogs.​

Watched the first 30 minutes. Carrier knows his stuff.

 

[dbz]

Watched the first 30 minutes. Carrier knows his stuff.

Carrier (14 October 2017) [now bolded]. “Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate”. Richard Carrier Blogs

I am currently the world’s leading expert on the specific, hyper-narrow question of the arguments for and against the historicity of Jesus. […] Every historian in this field [of early Christianity] is more knowledgeable than me on something, if not indeed most things, that aren’t directly on the question of historicity. Indeed even most of what I base my own case on, comes from the greater expertise of other published authors, on other hyper-narrow questions that are not directly about that single question [of the arguments for and against the historicity of Jesus]…

• See Carrier’s cited sources per the PDF Bibliography for On the Historicity of Jesus (2014).


The extant MSS are a complex mess of redactions and interpolations in multiple languages.

• Godfrey, Neil (24 October 2018). "Response #3: Non Sequitur's Tim O'Neill presentation, The Ascension of Isaiah". Vridar.

Charles, Robert Henry (1900). The Ascension of Isaiah: Translated from the Ethiopic Version, Which, Together with the New Greek Fragment, the Latin Versions and the Latin Translation of the Slavonic, is Here Published in Full. A. & C. Black. pp. xxv–xxvi.

I have already shown (p. xxi) that S is made from the same Greek text as L2, i.e. G2. It is, however, more faithful and full than L2. Thus where L2 omits words, phrases, or even whole sentences . . . the lacunae are supplied by S in agreement with E. Thus these passages that are lost in L2 go back to the archetype G.

---

Per Charles (1900). The Ascension of Isaiah. p.133:

[L2: XI.15]
[…]
Et vidi similem filii hominis,
et cum hominibus habitare et in mundo,

N.B. in comparison per così L2 ; trascurabili le varianti di S

[S: XI.20]
[…]
Et ecce vidi similem * ut filium hominis;
et cum hominibus * cum habitasset in mundo

Norelli writes that “Et vidi similem filii hominis…” depends on three verses in the New Testament.

• Norelli, Enrico ed. (1995). Ascensio Isaiae: Commentarius (in Italian). Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum (CCSA 8). Turnhout: Brepols. p. 536:
  

  Ora, a me pare che l’intero periodo
  et vidi similem filii hominis et cum hominibus habitare et in mundo, et non cognoverunt eum
  (così L2 ; trascurabili le varianti di S) dipenda in realtà da tre versetti neotestamentari…

Roger Parvus (27 January 2014). “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 8: The Source of Simon/Paul’s Gospel (continued)“. Vridar.

In the L2 and S versions the Lord’s mission in the world is presented by a single sentence:

2… And I saw one like a son of man, and he dwelt with men in the world, and they did not recognize him.

In place of this the Ethiopic versions have 21 verses, 17 of which are devoted to a miraculous birth story:

Roger Parvus ap. Neil Godfrey (29 October 2018). “Crucified on Earth? — What Did the “Ascension of Isaiah” Originally Say?“. Vridar.

But from the recognition that 11:2 of the L2/S branch is a sanitized substitute, it does not necessarily follow that 11:2-22 in the Ethiopic versions is authentic. That passage too is rejected by some (e.g., R. Laurence, F.C. Burkitt). And although most are inclined to accept it as original, they base that inclination on the primitive character of its birth narrative. Thus, for example, Knibb says “the primitive character of the narrative of the birth of Jesus suggests very strongly that the Eth[iopic version] has preserved the original form of the text” (“Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah: A New Translation and Introduction,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, edited by J.H. Charlesworth, p. 150).

Cf. Roger Parvus (27 January 2014). “A Simonian Origin for Christianity, Part 8: The Source of Simon/Paul’s Gospel (continued)“. Vridar.

---

Godfrey, Neil (8 June 2020). ""The Ascension of Isaiah" and Paul - a case made by James Barlow". Vridar.

 

[steve_bank]

Historians wrote books to make a living. As true back then as today. They played to an audience.

So called histories back then were always interpretations and fill in the blanks. The Greek writer Herodotus was nicknamed Herodotus The Liar. He turned here say about events he never witnessed as if he was there. Inventing as he needed.

Josephus was not a firsthand witness to any supernatural events or any of the alleged gospel i=events.

There was no journalism.

I think Jaryn got it right. Illiteracy was the norm. Whever Jesus may have been, he did not have the nooriety to appear in Roman recodrs. To Rome he wod have been one of many Jewish riff raff. It is known that there were people claiming the mantel of messia.

The gospel Jesus would not have stood out in the day.

There were Jews that got Roman attention. The leaders of the Jewish rebellions. Masada is well known and there is archeologyicalat the site.

I believe it is one of three choices.

1. There waa a real Jewish person on whom the stories evolved. Simple events growing as they are retold. Eventually reaching mythical scale.
2. Jesus in the gospels is a composite character. The disjointed events and contradictory quotes in the gospels may indelicate the Jesus character is a conflation of multiple people and events. No different than what we today call a docudrama. Composite charters based on real events.
3. The gospels re a complet fiction. Fiction writing did exist.

 

[dbz]

I believe it is one of three choices.

1. There waa a real Jewish person on whom the stories evolved. Simple events growing as they are retold. Eventually reaching mythical scale.
2. Jesus in the gospels is a composite character. The disjointed events and contradictory quotes in the gospels may indelicate the Jesus character is a conflation of multiple people and events. No different than what we today call a docudrama. Composite charters based on real events.
3. The gospels re a complet fiction. Fiction writing did exist.

1. There was a real Jewish person on whom the stories evolved. Despite many other flaws,[note 1] the gospels support a rounded figure[7][8] and a historical Jesus certainly existed.[9]
2. Christianity began by an amalgamist-mythicist process that resulted in the cross-fertilization of these myths about various persons.
3. The ahistorical Jesus originated from normative human sociological/religious impulses which includes religious syncretism.
4. Jesus is a deliberate synthetic fiction and/or a conspiracy.

 

[steve_bank]

If there was a flesh and blood Jesus, then so what? What does that get you?

Fith by definition does not require proof. I have come to believe theists on the forum are not trying to convince us atheists, they are trying to convince themselves.

 

[TomC]

I believe it is one of three choices.

1. There waa a real Jewish person on whom the stories evolved. Simple events growing as they are retold. Eventually reaching mythical scale.
2. Jesus in the gospels is a composite character. The disjointed events and contradictory quotes in the gospels may indelicate the Jesus character is a conflation of multiple people and events. No different than what we today call a docudrama. Composite charters based on real events.
3. The gospels re a complet fiction. Fiction writing did exist.

1. There was a real Jewish person on whom the stories evolved. Despite many other flaws,[note 1] the gospels support a rounded figure[7][8] and a historical Jesus certainly existed.[9]
2. Christianity began by an amalgamist-mythicist process that resulted in the cross-fertilization of these myths about various persons.
3. The ahistorical Jesus originated from normative human sociological/religious impulses which includes religious syncretism.
4. Jesus is a deliberate synthetic fiction and/or a conspiracy.

The reason I find this conversation unimportant is because I don't see those four options as mutually exclusive.
Since there is no strong evidence about any of them, other than something happened, what various people assert to support their agenda doesn't matter much to me.

I find the most plausible explanation for the existence of Christianity, as we know it, to be an inspiring and charismatic Jewish guy from the first century CE. His Message was soon perverted and weaponized, by the 4th century. That's when the Roman Elite took control.

Christianity became a government agency and a huge source of wealth and power for the elite. It's remained so to this day. A hugely corrupting force in the world. Enough "compelling evidence" for me constitute proof that Jesus was just a guy who tried to do the right thing at the time, not God or anything.
Tom

ETA ~"Yet what followed? By the fruit ye shall know. Half of the human race, constituting the Christian world, already follow that poor carpenter;"
The fruits of the humans following Jesus are generally known as Euro-Christian Empire. Christian culture became the most violent and rapacious culture in the history of the Family of Humanity. Centuries of violence and oppression, slavery and genocide, an orgy of Christianity around the globe. From the Dutch and Spanish to the French and English, the list of Christian Nations causing death and destruction is huge.

That's the fruits of Jesus Christ leaving such a vague and useful message to the European aristocracy.~

 

[steve_bank]

I believe it is one of three choices.

1. There waa a real Jewish person on whom the stories evolved. Simple events growing as they are retold. Eventually reaching mythical scale.
2. Jesus in the gospels is a composite character. The disjointed events and contradictory quotes in the gospels may indelicate the Jesus character is a conflation of multiple people and events. No different than what we today call a docudrama. Composite charters based on real events.
3. The gospels re a complet fiction. Fiction writing did exist.

1. There was a real Jewish person on whom the stories evolved. Despite many other flaws,[note 1] the gospels support a rounded figure[7][8] and a historical Jesus certainly existed.[9]
2. Christianity began by an amalgamist-mythicist process that resulted in the cross-fertilization of these myths about various persons.
3. The ahistorical Jesus originated from normative human sociological/religious impulses which includes religious syncretism.
4. Jesus is a deliberate synthetic fiction and/or a conspiracy.

The reason I find this conversation unimportant is because I don't see those four options as mutually exclusive.
Since there is no strong evidence about any of them, other than something happened, what various people assert to support their agenda doesn't matter much to me.

I find the most plausible explanation for the existence of Christianity, as we know it, to be an inspiring and charismatic Jewish guy from the first century CE. His Message was soon perverted and weaponized, by the 4th century. That's when the Roman Elite took control.

Christianity became a government agency and a huge source of wealth and power for the elite. It's remained so to this day. A hugely corrupting force in the world. Enough "compelling evidence" for me constitute proof that Jesus was just a guy who tried to do the right thing at the time, not God or anything.
Tom

ETA ~"Yet what followed? By the fruit ye shall know. Half of the human race, constituting the Christian world, already follow that poor carpenter;"
The fruits of the humans following Jesus are generally known as Euro-Christian Empire. Christian culture became the most violent and rapacious culture in the history of the Family of Humanity. Centuries of violence and oppression, slavery and genocide, an orgy of Christianity around the globe. From the Dutch and Spanish to the French and English, the list of Christian Nations causing death and destruction is huge.

That's the fruits of Jesus Christ leaving such a vague and useful message to the European aristocracy.~

Okey Foket,

The elaboration and invention continues as it has for 2000 years with no resolution.

It is all meaningless, but it gives me mental exercise. As Hercule Poirot would say, 'the little grey cells'.

The European aristocracy. what a laugh. The RCC was always a tool of state. It get the peasnts in line through fear and intimation. There was nothing benecolent about European Chrtianity.


No one today has any dies what the forst folloers if there were any avutly belived and who the Jesus charer was. He coud easiy have been a rnting precher like we see today in Chrtianity.

The Chrtianity as it deeloped in Europe and as yiu have it today shud be called Psulism. Paul got rid of the Jewish reuirements.

The gospel Jesus was a Jew preachung to Jews invoking Mosaic Law and the prophets. He never rnouced Judaism.

If you want to follow Jesus get circumcised and keep kosher.

As to messages, Jesu of the gospels was weak. Buddhism predated Jesus by about 300 years. A consisent moral system based on compassion for all living things. Hindism may be the oldest tradition and is the root of much tat followed.

The Only consistent message was The Sermon On The Mount.

The primary Jesu message was bare yiur buder and yiu will be i heaven with me. If you are a slave, be a credit to your master.

'Love yiur neighbor as yourself' is just a restement of the common Golden Rule, treat others as you want to be treated.

Then there is arrogance, the pooryiu will have forever me only a short while.

In the light of pur modern moarl views Jesus does not make the grade.

 

[dbz]

As to messages, Jesu of the gospels was weak. Buddhism predated Jesus by about 300 years. A consisent moral system based on compassion for all living things.

• Michael Lockwood — scholar and writer

From many angles of research covered in the three books of my trilogy, the books of the New Testament are shown to be historical fiction. Though these books are profound works of literature, they are still works of fiction. And since the New Testament narratives are replete with allusions to Buddhist stories, as well as to stories in the Septuagint, and to Homer’s epics, and to the narratives of Euripides, Sophocles, and Plato, among others, and in the Book of Revelation, to ancient Egyptian narratives, and, finally, to historical accounts of Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, it becomes incumbent on researchers to examine carefully and extensively the well-documented studies of Buddhist influence on Christianity.[100]

Michael Lockwood was born in British India. He earned degrees from Oberlin College, B.A. (English), Boston University, M.A. (philosophy), and Madras University, Ph.D. (philosophy) and taught philosophy for thirty-two years (1966-1998), in South India at Madras Christian College, Tambaram. He has published the books, Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity (Madras 2010); Mythicism (Madras 2013); and The Unknown Buddha of Christianity (Tambaram 2019), and was an editor contributor for Indology.

Covington, Nicholas (May 10, 2022). "Review: The Varieties of Jesus Mythicism". Hume's Apprentice.

Christianity is a Western Branch of Buddhism, by Michael Lockwood. The gospel of thomas having an alphabet story about Jesus and a parallel story being told about the buddha is fascinating and fairly reasonable to attribute to influence. The Johannine passages the author argues are derivative from Buddhism seems very much within the realm of coincidence in my eyes. On the other hand, I believe there was literary mimesis between the walking on water stories in Jataka 190 about Buddha and Matthew 14:22-33, with the former emphasizing focus as giving one the ability to do all things and the latter emphasizing faith. So I believe there was interplay between ancient Christianity and buddhism and throughout the ages even (with St. Jehosephat being a Christianized Buddha in the Middle Ages) but doubt strongly that Christianity is nothing more than a Westernized Buddhism.

HERMANN DETERING: JESUS ON THE OTHER SHORE

5 THE CHRISTIAN REDEEMER JESUS – A RESULT OF
THE JEWISH-BUDDHIST EXEGESIS
On the basis of the gnostic interpretation of the Exodus
motif and the question of its historical religious origin, we
came across the central importance of the image of the
“other shore” used as a transcendence metaphor, which
plays a significant role in Indian/Buddhist spirituality.
The question of where the two lines converge, on the one
hand Jewish tradition and Hebrew Scripture, and on the
other hand Buddhist or Indian spirituality, led us to the
Theraputae, about whom Philo of Alexandria reports in his
book De Vita Contemplativa.
Once the Buddhist origin of the Therapeutae was recog-
nized as plausible, it could be shown that their central
mystery is an interpretation of the Exodus motif based on
underlying Buddhist sources. At the same time, this inter-
pretation contains the germ of the Christian baptismal sac-
rament.
Early Christian Gnostics like the Peratae and Naassenes
transferred to Moses’ successor Joshua, what for the Ther-
apeutae, being more deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition,
was reserved to Moses. The old Moses cult was to be super-
seded by the new, Gnostic-Christian Joshua cult. Je-
sus/Joshua became the counterpart of Moses.
The Christian Redeemer Joshua/Jesus is nothing more
than that – a result of the Jewish-Buddhist exegesis of the
Old Testament! The “historical” Jesus, i.e., Jesus of Naza-
reth, was hypostatized from the image of the Old Testa-
ment Joshua during the 2nd century.
[
It goes far beyond the limited task of this essay to trace in
detail the complicated literary and historical process that led
from the “ford crosser” Joshua ben Nun to the “historical Je-
sus”. It is clear that the idea of passion and resurrection was
still alien to the original Jesus/Joshua cult. Presumably it
goes back to a combining with the myth of the dying and resur-
rected mystery god (Osiris, Attis, Adonis, etc.) spread through-
out the Mediterranean. The myth was originally without
temporal fixation. It only originated in the second century
from this foundation in the Gospels. In them, Jesus is de-
scribed as a historical person under Pontius Pilate. The au-
thor of the Gospel of Mark was certainly one of the first to
portray the image of the Savior as a historical figure and to
portray Jesus as the Jewish Messiah (Christ)
]

 

[steve_bank]

If a beief in an ancient Jew gives you an anchor asd meaning in a chaotic world, good for you. Go with it.

 

[dbz]

If a beief in an ancient Jew gives you an anchor asd meaning in a chaotic world, good for you. Go with it.

I get the devotion to a second-god by some cranks for historicity, but the cranks for historicity that are self proclaimed non-theist/atheist is bizarre.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

Hi Everyone. Great Discussion! I just wanted to share that I am beginning blogging through the Price/Loftus "Varieties of Mythicism" anthology, beginning with the Miller foreword. Please join me and share / comment as we explore this volume at Secular Frontier Blog (The Blog Of Internet Infidels/Secular Web). See https://secularfrontier.infidels.or...e-review-part-1-foreword-by-richard-c-miller/

 

[Elixir]

If a beief in an ancient Jew gives you an anchor asd meaning in a chaotic world, good for you. Go with it.

Sure. Just keep it to yourself.