The Jesus story has details that is most definitely made up i just realized!!!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Seriously, dude?  You can go to just about any Catholic cathedral in Europe and find pieces of the True Cross.  What more evidence do you need??

Of course, this means that Jesus was crucified on a cross roughly eight hundred feet high, but let's not get bogged down in details...

Boru

No first rate scholar doubts the existence of the historical Jesus.

This is essentially true, but I would phase it differently:

The overwhelming majority of first rate scholars agree that there is an historical basis for the person referred to as Jesus of Nazareth.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

They just dont know what that basis is or who that historical person was.

lol

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

They just dont know what that basis is or who that historical person was.

lol

Exactly.  And most of them also point out that the historical 'Jesus of Nazareth' is likely to hold very little resemblance to the one we read about in the Gospels.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

I admit that as a nonbeliever, I don't need Jesus to be a myth. If it turns out the mythicists are wrong, and one day some good evidence for a real Jesus gets uncovered, it's not as if Christianity will suddenly start making sense. But in all honesty I can't see any indication that there was some historical person behind the Jesus myth aside from Jesus ben-Ananias and few other characters whose life histories were borrowed to make Jesus's.

I guess I used to think that Jesus was like Sai Baba because there was some real guy who changed his name into Sai Baba and had followers who invented and believed that he performed many miracles like raising the dead, healing, teleportation.
But then again, Sai Baba was incredibly popular person and there are many records about him, some favorable and some not, but without any doubt he existed and for thousands of years people won't doubt his existence. And he was also very influential among politicians, so if you believe Jesus existed and was son of God you can't notice that some schmuck like Sai Baba was much better in business of a holy man than Jesus.

And also if you take Bible as source of information about historical Jesus which information would you take for granted? Gospels start with Jesus's Genealogy and you know it's all bullshit because none of these OT characters existed. And then more and more bullshit until you come to Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist which some consider to be real event - you know after paragraphs and paragraphs where people just freely lied and inserted their made-up stories we finally come to some "truth". And why should that be true? John the Baptist cult makes no sense. If Jesus was real God then why would he need John the Baptist, especially why would John's cult continue to exist if Jesus was the real God? Wouldn't other cult be a blasphemy?

And then are still more gospels and stories about Jesus that were not chosen into the "official" Bible that give even more different picture of Jesus. And why weren't they chosen? Nobody knows. So this also shows how somebody created Jesus out of mountain of myths.

[The Grand Nudger]

There’s a tiny window of candidacy for potential information in a historical Jesus...and all of the historic jesi are composite characters.

Mostly comprised of inferences about what life was like in the date and time. First, we imagine a period appropriate anyman. Then, we refer to the scant biographical detail in the earliest surviving mentions. The authentic Pauline epistles. The irony begins there, since the historical problem of Jesus is repeated in the historical problem of Paul.

Next, we wonder what set of circumstances might lead to people’s belief in the Synoptics, with a huge caveat for Luke, due to its relationship to Acts.

John contains exclusively mythical or legendary information.

[Fake Messiah]

The way I see it it is like it was with Moses couple of decades ago: people realized he didn't exist and then tried to find some other historical person as a proxy. And why? Because they couldn't dismiss him just like that. Even Sigmund Freud wrote a "book" about how Moses was just some follower of Akhenaten and demanded that it doesn't get published for several decades because many people still believed there was a real Moses including historians and the fear of what would happen if people found out not that Moses didn't exist but that he was somebody else and of course he feared his own saftey

To deny a people the man whom it praises as the greatest of its sons is not a deed to be undertaken light-heartedly especially by one belonging to that people. No consideration, however, will move rne to set aside truth in favour of supposed national interests. [...]

The man Moses, the liberator of his people, who gave them their religion and their laws, belonged to an age so remote that the preliminary question arises whether he was an historical person or a legendary figure. If he lived, his time was the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C.; we have no word of him but from the Holy Books and the written traditions of the Jews. Although the decision lacks final historical certainty, the great majority of historians have expressed the opinion that Moses did live and that the exodus from Egypt, led by him, did in fact take place.
[...]

Such violent methods of suppression are by no means alien to the Catholic Church ; she feels it rather as an intrusion into her privileges when other people resort to the same means. Psycho -Analysis, however, which has travelled everywhere during the course of my long life, has not yet found a more serviceable home than in the city where it was born and grew. I do not only think so, I know that this external danger will deter me from publishing the last part of my treatise on Moses. I have tried to remove this obstacle by telling myself that my fear is based on an over-estimation of my personal importance, and that the authorities would probably be quite indifferent to what I should have to say about Moses and the origin of monotheistic religions. Yet I do not feel sure that my judgement is correct. It seems to me more likely that malice and an appetite for sensation would make up for the importance I may lack in the eyes of the world. So I shall not publish this essay. But that need not hinder me from writing it. The more so since it was written once before, two years ago, and thus only needs re -writing and adding on to the two previous essays. Thus it may lie hid until the time comes when it may safely venture into the light of day, or until someone else who reaches the same opinions and conclusions can be told: " In darker days there lived a man who thought as you did."

So as I see it, Jesus is in a phase where mainstream consensus doesn't want to dismiss him yet, but rather searches for a proxy and then in few years or decades, no serious person will consider Jesus real even as a proxy, just like it is now with Moses.

[The Grand Nudger]

Plausible. Ultimately, the difficulty of obtaining new information about Jesus the man and it’s irrelevance the the more historically important Christian faith has already left him in a position similar to Moses. Legendary if not mythical, a composite character, if a man.

We know that the beliefs of Christian tradition aren’t attributable to any Jesus the man. The religion itself is based on the content in magic book, explicitly legendary and mythical...combined with local folklore and conventions specific to the group of believers.

To bring it full circle to the OP’s title, ofc it contains those elements. They are theologically, not historically, important. It doesn’t matter that no preacher ever made baskets of fish appear. It is important that this preacher hand out full baskets of sustenance to his disciples, to be distributed amongst the people. That he be able to feed the multitudes. The fish aren’t fish at all.

It’s not a biography, it’s the founding documentation of a superstition.

[Abaddon_ire]

I admit that as a nonbeliever, I don't need Jesus to be a myth. If it turns out the mythicists are wrong, and one day some good evidence for a real Jesus gets uncovered, it's not as if Christianity will suddenly start making sense. But in all honesty I can't see any indication that there was some historical person behind the Jesus myth aside from Jesus ben-Ananias and few other characters whose life histories were borrowed to make Jesus's.

Agree. I have no objection to jebus being an actual historical person, or possibly an amalgam of the many wandering apocalyptic rabbis in the levant at that time. It's just kind of mundane.

If I claim that there are wandering street preachers on the streets of any city preaching the imminent end of the world, nobody would argue that. Why is 30-33 CE any different? Sure, there is not much evidence to work from, but it hardly counts as an extraordinary claim, does it? Such apocalyptic preachers have existed for as long as we have records. It is hardly a surprise that some existed in the levant at a time of foment and turmoil, is it?

Eleazar ben Yair, for example. That's pretty heavily documented.

For me, there is no reason that jebus the bastard is impossible in the levant at the time. It was "de riguer" for the region and time. Hell, even jesus is a common frakking first name even today. What are the chances of lots of blokes being named jesus in the 2,000 years ago levant? 100%.

People should pay far more attention to the subtext of "The Life of Brian".

[The Grand Nudger]

Nothing you just mentioned is the historical Jesus. Mythicists propose the sort of Jesus you’re referring to.

Where the character of some existing rando (or randos) provides human detail for the myth of the Christ through their various authors, a myth which predates and was unrelated to their person(s) otherwise.

[Fake Messiah]

Agree. I have no objection to jebus being an actual historical person, or possibly an amalgam of the many wandering apocalyptic rabbis in the levant at that time. It's just kind of mundane.

If I claim that there are wandering street preachers on the streets of any city preaching the imminent end of the world, nobody would argue that. Why is 30-33 CE any different? Sure, there is not much evidence to work from, but it hardly counts as an extraordinary claim, does it? Such apocalyptic preachers have existed for as long as we have records. It is hardly a surprise that some existed in the levant at a time of foment and turmoil, is it?

Eleazar ben Yair, for example. That's pretty heavily documented.

For me, there is no reason that jebus the bastard is impossible in the levant at the time. It was "de riguer" for the region and time. Hell, even jesus is a common frakking first name even today. What are the chances of lots of blokes being named jesus in the 2,000 years ago levant? 100%.

People should pay far more attention to the subtext of "The Life of Brian".

But again, why do you assume it was based on some apocalyptic preacher? You even admit that there was nothing special about apocalyptic preachers in the past and on top of that, being an apocalyptic prophet wasn't illegal either.

Jesus also wears other hats in the Gospels that are hard to ignore: exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. So why not conclude he was based on an ancient exorcist? Historical Jesus might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time.