I don't understand why you can't see the difference between adding old mythological accoutrements to a real person, and taking an old mythological figure called Mithras and for no apparent reason recasting him as a Galilean carpenter called Jesus.
My issue comes with the fact that you can create a character from eons past or last weekend without that character being real. As a man that likes to write, I find I do it all the time.
Having given it some thought over the day, I have come to the conclusion that we are by and large talking about two different things. I find that when I write a story, the characters are generally a 'template' of someone that does exist. Although it might sound vain, in most cases the template is myself. I use my mannerisms, ideals, behaviour etc to create a character. The big
but in the story is that the actual character is not real.
Yes, there might have been a jesus.. there were probably many of them.. but the jesus that has been written about - the character portrayed in the NT is clearly fictional - or there is certainly no evidence concerning the existence of such a character.
What you have done is stripped the character naked. No, this isn't true, this isn't true and neither is this,
but there was a guy named jesus. Once you do that there is no meaning to the topic anymore. Did jesus exist? Sure.. hundreds did. Did the jesus from the bible exist? It's a completely different question.
Was the character's 'persona' taken from real people? Most likely.. it usually is - but that does not make the person real. There would have been many long haired carpenters that knew religious texts and preached it - and the biblical texts could have happily been a mass amalgamation of all of these people without anyone ever doubting a word. The only thing that separates these people is the acts attributed to the character - in this case his role as son of god, his miracles etc etc. Without them we are no longer talking about a specific person.
Generally when a person turns into a mythological character, or becomes a 'legend'.. the miraculous aspects come along eons later, (as you yourself would most likely agree to given your earlier statements concerning Thatcher etc). To add miraculous components to a person that is apparently right there, right then is either because the miraculous components are true or because the story is a work of fiction.
You would either have to espouse right now that Paul, (who you state was around at the same sort of time), is either giving a factual account of a character or he's talking utter horseshit.
You have told me that jesus pretty much must have existed because the stories concerning him were written at a time where other people would have known about him and "would have been able to consult with living friends and followers of Jesus", but then the same must ring true for the man's actions aswell? Paul states that this man walked on water.. the people there at the time must have been able to find out whether there was any validity to that claim as much as they would have been able to find out whether this specific jesus person actually existed?
As to Jesus being "nearly the time of wriitng", it very definitely does make a difference. Jesus is so near the time of writing that it's just too unlikely that there wasn't somebody about whom the stories were based.
And yet while writing about a real person that everyone could verify, the author decided to also add a bunch of old cobblers for the mere sake of it in the hopes that nobody would attempt to verify it?
Your argument relies entirely on making allusion to modern fictional characters. There simply was no such thing in those times, unless you can prove differently.
My argument comes in several forms:
A) The lack of evidence, (external non-bias evidence).
B) That for some reason you deny 3/4 of the story but agree with 1/4 on the basis that people were there to refute it if it was lies.
C) That fictional characters do exist and have always existed. While, as I stated earlier, they are often a 'template' of real people, the actual characters are entirely fictional.
What you're doing is saying "Peter Parker is real but Spiderman isn't" - even though they are both the same character and written about at the same time, in the same text, by the same author. How can you justify dismissing one while accepting the other when they are both the same thing?
jesus was a man that walked on water and healed the sick. If you dismiss the walking on water and healing of the sick, then we're no longer talking about jesus, but any old jackass that happened to have long hair.
But in any case, the creation of Jesus like that would have involved not only creating a religion and a demi-God to worship, but simultaneously inventing the contemporary novel, as far as I know an entirely new literary form.
A) The creation of jesus
did involve a new religion and a new demi-god. It wasn't Joe Bloggs that was being written about, but a man born of god's willy. A man that raised the dead and led possessed pigs to suicide.
B) As for inventing a new literary form, I'll have to have a quick browse after a snooze
or rather agreeing with yourself.
Well, I certainly concur that I am agreeing with myself. It would seem silly not to. Indeed if I wasn't going to agree with myself, I just wouldn't say anything to begin with
I consider it valid because of what they said about him. I don't mean "Jesus was the Son of God and look at all the people he healed". I mean Galilean carpenter, taught and preached, annoyed the authorities (Jewish and Roman), tried and "crucified" (which may or may not involve a crossbeam, I'm not certain).
But as stated above, in doing so we're not talking about jesus anymore. We're not talking about the person that Paul etc wrote about. I have no issues believing that carpenters existed, or that many many many people got crucified after annoying authorities. None of that makes jesus real.
Of course for Paul and the bunch, these things were the norm of the day. Nowadays stories do not have people being crucified, but people being shot in the head while wandering the ghetto looking for some "charlie", (coke). I am not disagreeing that there are people getting shot in the head while looking for charlie in the ghetto, but that a specific person named Wayne that gets charlie by flying round on a magic carpet with people shooting at him ever existed. Perhaps if there was some dude named Wayne that was quite a hero amongst ghetto drug dealers and then was turned into legend as time passed it would be understandable, (and thus my earlier arguments concerning Gilgamesh etc), but to add all those fictional pieces of nonsense to Wayne while he's still walking the ghetto seems less credible than the other way around.
In essence I am debating the opposite to you here.
Surely the point is to cast doubt on Jesus's existence by raising doubt about people who make claims about him? Of course you can raise that doubt, but seemingly only by reference to genuinely famous people about whose existence there is no doubt. So, the point is lost, it seems to me.
The point was simply that people make shit up.
Why does that not apply to other historical figures of the same era? The evidence for them is frequently less.
Well then it does, or should. Of course it wont generally get so much attention for reasons we both agreed to earlier.
Three different near-contemporary accounts, probably based on at least some eyewitness testimony?
Supposed eyewitness that attested to there being a hippy carpenter, or a hippy carpenter that walked on water. Why dismiss it if those very same supposed eyewitnesses attested to the latter, but find them credible if they just attest to the former even though the actual claim concerns the latter just as much as the former?
You disregard documents that date back only as far as the fourth century
Certainly. They're a few hundred years too late to actually have a say in the matter.
“ “ He was this guy who said things, attracted a following, pissed off the authorities and was executed. ”
Again, we could be talking about anyone. The jesus we are talking about was not just that, he was a lot more. If you're going to strip the character naked, we're not talking about that character anymore, but something entirely different.
Obviously he does not back this up simply by saying "It says so in the New Testament", but by close reading and cross-referencing between the Gospels, what it says in Paul and other extra-Biblical sources.
So.. because the book says so, (and some other much latter bias claims)?
