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Don't hang too much on it. Atwill has a... less than stellar (ahem) reputation amongst actual Biblical scholars. There is a nice sum up of this over on Patheos but this is really no more crdible than the DaVinci code, or Erich von Daniken...
Take the unicorn. All of us believe it not to be real. However, there's been at least 500 years of legend just in Europe, and there are different cultures, some of which have no discernible contact with each other that have unicorn-like creatures.
The flood? No, contrary to popular belief, the Judeo-Christians do not own a monopoly on the flood. This is told on pretty much EVERY continent.
Our beliefs determine reality to a large extent. This is why the power of positive thinking in self-help tends to work.
So a nonexistent person can still be real, by the difference he makes in people's lives.
Take the unicorn. All of us believe it not to be real. However, there's been at least 500 years of legend just in Europe, and there are different cultures, some of which have no discernible contact with each other that have unicorn-like creatures.
The flood? No, contrary to popular belief, the Judeo-Christians do not own a monopoly on the flood. This is told on pretty much EVERY continent.
Our beliefs determine reality to a large extent. This is why the power of positive thinking in self-help tends to work.
So a nonexistent person can still be real, by the difference he makes in people's lives.
^This.
a good wise post.
To me this equates to following after those who most impress you. It matter not to me that Jesus may have been a myth. For the most part I like the character.
It matter not to me that Jesus may have been a myth.
And if this provides you comfort, more power to you. But my concern is not about people whom admit he might be a myth, but get comfort from that anyway. I am ONLY concerned about people who do NOT believe he was a myth and want to impose their dogma on our society because of it. Which a 2 minute perusal of these boards can find dozens of examples of.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Quote:
The biography of Jesus is actually constructed, tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar."
How could this go unnoticed in the most scrutinised books of all time? "Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it. An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognised the literary game being played." Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that "the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'"
No, there's nothing remotely similar in the gospel literature showing him as having lived like a Roman Emperor. I guess the particular Titus Flavius he refers to would have been Vespasion, who arose from humble origins before military conquests and was notable for his use of propaganda to give the impression that he was a supernatural leader (as a part of his campaign to quell rebellion), even perhaps the Jewish messiah come in the form of a Roman Emperor. But I've seen no parallels to Christ's life other than that, since it was Vespasian claiming to be the messiah, or hinting at it.
At any rate, Paul's letters are dated to before Vespasian and the fall of Jerusalem, and thus came before any plot to use Vespasion's history as the basis of social engineering.
I suppose that the gospels are mainly legendary rather than purely mythical, as I said in a previous similar thread. There's enough evidence to establish that he was born a Jew, was a wandering healer and preacher, and died on a cross.
No, there's nothing remotely similar in the gospel literature showing him as having lived like a Roman Emperor. I guess the particular Titus Flavius he refers to would have been Vespasion, who arose from humble origins before military conquests and was notable for his use of propaganda to give the impression that he was a supernatural leader (as a part of his campaign to quell rebellion), even perhaps the Jewish messiah come in the form of a Roman Emperor. But I've seen no parallels to Christ's life other than that, since it was Vespasian claiming to be the messiah, or hinting at it.
At any rate, Paul's letters are dated to before Vespasian and the fall of Jerusalem, and thus came before any plot to use Vespasion's history as the basis of social engineering.
I suppose that the gospels are mainly legendary rather than purely mythical, as I said in a previous similar thread. There's enough evidence to establish that he was born a Jew, was a wandering healer and preacher, and died on a cross.
I thinks so. There is a case can be made that it was all invented, Paul's letters by Marcion, the Jesus story out of existing mythology and rather than a Gentile agenda for hi -jacking Judaism, an Imperial roman agenda for inventing the messiah figure. For what reason I can't imagine.
The one point that makes me doubt that is the old principle of embarrassment. If you were going to invent a story, you'd write it to eliminate all problems. You wouldn't write in problems that you'd have to work hard to explain away. Like why Rome killed Jesus instead of the Jews stoning him. Why he was a Galilean when Bethlehem birth is scripturally necessary.
So I don't buy this Ceasar -based Jesus at all.
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