Jesus Christ as a Myth (believe, born, atheists, bible)
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I was just curious how many other non-believers here believe, as I do, that Jesus Christ may be just a myth.
There are loads of links backing up these claims, as well as books and arguements such as this one but I know that many atheists do believe he was real, just not the "son of god" who performed miracles and all but a normal, mortal man.
After doing lots of reading when I first discovered agnoticism years back, I began to think that it is a good chance that Jesus and his story is a complete fabrication; a myth, like many.
He would appear to be more of a successful PR campaign for an infant religious movement, embellished and changed to suit their needs throughout the years.
I believe he was a real man and his story propagated into some kind of religious epic to advance religious agendas. IMO, Jesus was a good man who had great parents, Joseph and Mary, which were proactive.
Interesting to question Jesus Christ. OF course anything is possible. The most interesting aspect is the degrees of belief. Being raised Catholic (I now consider myself a recovering Catholic), I leave the possibility that there is truth in the Greatest Story Ever Told. After all, I don't want to get zapped for sacriledge.
As with much in the bible, apparently there's precious little actual and traceable documentation or good evidence FOR Jesus as a Son of God character. no tax documents, no property ownership, no record of birth. Those who have done the scholarly stuff tell us there's little documentation even though there is such traceable lineage for others of the same era. Also, there's that missing what is it? 25 or so years?
It seems to me likely or at least possible that he was simply a creative construct of necessity, a liaison between the biblical but elusive and uncommunicative God figure and the illiterate masses who needed a spokesperson who would communicate in their simplistic terms. (No, I guess it's PC-OK to day spokes-MAN in this case...). So, let's invent a "man in the street" personality, yes?
That concept certainly fits the bill and the story, where Jesus only seems to emerge and provide interaction and commentary when a fable or myth needs to be created or supported. There's certainly no stories of him getting blitzo in the pub with friends, or chasing the ladies. Imagine a bright young healthy Jewish lad going through his twenties without any interest in the young ladies of the town and country.....
Well since the first option includes the possibility of the second option (but not the other way around), I chose the first option. Like any agnostic, I just don't know if he existed.
From what I've read, Jesus was a pretty popular name back then. So sure, someone named Jesus obviously probably existed. The question is were there any guys named Jesus who resemble the biblical stories, and if so, how much is real and how much is fiction?
My guess is the people who wrote the bible didn't know that much about the actual truth, since it happened decades before written and they weren't there anyway. Then the people who compiled the stories and set the canon didn't care which stories were most accurate, they just wanted the ones that supported their agenda (look up Eusebius for example).
"Eusebius (260-339) is on record saying 'It is an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the church might be promoted'."
]HiddenMysteries Spiritual Studies
I think it's highly unlikely that the one from the Bible existed. Matter of fact, I'm sure he didn't. That doesn't mean that some guy named Jesus didn't exist at some point in time during that era. That doesn't seem that improbable.
Plenty of other religions have Christ-like figures, and had them before Christianity. Man born of a virgin, dies, resurrects after three days, the whole spiel.
There may have been a real life referent for some of those stories, even if all or most of them were made up.
Here's an example that I use to explain it. We actually know a lot about George Washington, most of which is very well documented. We can say without a doubt when and where he was born (I recognize there's a bit of doubt about the exact date), where he lived, and the major events of his life. There are also stories, handed down mainly by word of mouth, that we definitely know, or can be confident, are not true.
We're now about two hundred years after George Washington's death, or about the same span of time as elapsed between the writing of the gospels and the events supposedly described in them.
Our knowledge of the existence, life, and deeds of Jesus, based on the gospels, is about as reliable as our knowledge of George Washington would be if the only things we knew about him were that he cut down a cherry tree and told the truth about it, and that he threw a dollar across the Potomac River.
If that was all we had to go on, would we be justified in calling George Washington a myth? I would say so.
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