(March 3, 2015 at 2:16 am)robvalue Wrote: Tim: thank you for that explanation. I'm still looking through everything you've posted here. Would you agree that the bible's account of jesus' life is still mythical in nature, in the vast majority? That is, if it was based on a real person, the overlap between them and the bible jesus would amount to say 5%, and the rest is highly likely to be made up or exaggerated. Do you think that would be a fair assessment?
We have no way of making that assessment. It could be 5% or it could be much, much higher. Once we rule out the miracles, there really isn't much in there that is hard to accept - Jesus went to a town, told a parable, disputed with some other people, preached to some peasants, ate a meal etc. It's pretty unremarkable stuff. But it's impossible to determine how likely it is to have happened.
Even most of the miracles are impossible to rule out completely. Walking on water and raising the dead almost certainly didn't happen. But in a society which associated affliction and possession with sin, faith healing of people who are "lame" or "blind" is hardly miraculous. And he must have got his reputation as a miracle worker from somewhere.
The general tenor of the story is entirely plausible. Remove the more spectacular claims of huge crowds of followers, feeding 5000 people and rising from the dead and you have ... the story of a first century apocalyptic charismatic.
The problem is that there is no way of assessing the likelihood of these ordinary stuff - all we can say is that it's entirely possible. His crucifxion and his brother's execution are able to be reasonably well established by external evidence. His origins in Nazareth, his baptism and his apocalyptic message can all be quite well established by internal inference. The miracles can be (largely) ruled out. The rest - its fits with the context and makes sense but we can't assess it's likelihood.
