What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[TimOneill]

the story of Jesus contains all of the elements of any great tale: The hero begins poor, works his way up and gains popularity and power, some evil force knocks him down and it looks like he will not get back up... until lo and behold that's exactly what happens, tenfold. It's the most overused plot of all time. Even the Old Testament contains numerous versions.

Lots of historical people have life stories like that as well. And the retellings of lots of historical people's lives often take on that shape, thanks to a few tweakings and additions. So stories which have this shape can be told about both mythical and historical people. The children's story of Dick Whittington takes this form, for example. It's pretty unlikely that Whittington's fortunes were really all due to the skill of his mouse killing cat or a prophecy rung out by the bells of London's Bow Church, but the fact remains that there was a Lord Mayor of London called Dick Whittington who rose from lowly beginnings to be friend to two kings.

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Oh dear, Tim, you do seem to be the type who thinks "coherent" means treating this gospel shit as "real."

Anyone who has read my posts here can see that is nonsense.

You remind me of the type who asserts that "all real scholars think jesus existed" and then denounce any one who doesn't as "not a real scholar."

I have never said that either. Please stop trying to disagree with things I haven’t said and pay attention to what I have said. Unlike some, I take the time to state my positions clearly and support them with arguments and citations of the evidence. I find that works better than vague allusions, sneering and dodging.

It's a very convenient position for you to take.

I haven’t taken it, so stop wasting your time and mine imaging things I’ve never said.

Sorry, pal. I'm not playing your game. Until some actual evidence can be presented that any of this shit is factual and not a later story concocted by a bunch of xtians to establish the primacy of their particular bullshit sect I shall regard it as the latter.

“Actual evidence” of what, exactly?

We have archaeological evidence that the term Chrestians was in use in Rome by 37 AD.

We do?

The Chrestiani inscription naming Jucundus, Antonia Minor and her husband Drusus establishes Chrestianity in Rome during the Augustan period.

This seemed to be a quote from someone or other, but you didn’t attribute it or give a citation for it. So I Googled it on the small chance it may actually be from a scholarly article. Google led me to a gloriously inarticulate (in fact, barely literate) “paper” on academia.edu by someone called “John A. Bartram”, uploaded there (of course) by none other than John A. Bartram. This “paper” was a crazed series of assertions, non sequiturs and illogical acrobatics that seemed to argue … something or other. It was hard to tell what this person was trying to say. But it seemed to be saying there was a cult called “Chrestianity” which was like Christianity but … wasn’t. Or something.

The inscription is here if you'd like to see it.

https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/4sxyy5z...3fe2db.png

That’s an inscription referring to someone with a name or (more likely) nickname meaning “good, useful”. Nothing more.

So, Chrestians in Rome.

From that? You can’t be serious. This is like someone in some future century finding a reference to someone nicknamed “Happy” and using it to make an argument about the existence of hippies. After all – “happy”/”hippy”; only one letter apart.

So, you see, if you pull your head out of those silly books …

And pay attention to this kind of gibberish by a semi-literate nobody called John A. Bartram? I’ll stick to the books thanks. I haven’t seen nonsense this bad since I made the mistake of browsing on the forum of “Achaya S” and her blank-eyed acolytes.