Where did the Jesus myth come from?

[The Grand Nudger]

A fair-skinned white man with feathery hair (wtf?).

Don't forget the british accent!

Redneck Jesus disapproves of your heresy, and he's armed. Jesus clearly has a thick lustrous mullet, speaks with a heavy drawl, and likes to go muddin in his truck whilst hunting deer with his aftermarket fully automatic assualt rifle.

[Minimalist]

[Jackalope]

Seriously? Dan Brown? He wrote fiction and labeled it as such. That's moving past poisoning the well and strawmanning and into outright lying.

Well, they say he was making a real argument through the use of fiction.

Projection?

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL< Jesus has his EIB, now that's high speed. The hair is longer than regs and the beard has to go (gas mask issue-or so the story goes).

[Faith No More]

Seriously? Dan Brown? He wrote fiction and labeled it as such.

When Dan Brown was being sewed for copyright, I saw a television show about it, and one of the central issues was the copyright infringement was only possible because he wasn't labeling it fiction. He had taken the idea of Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene from another book in which the author claims it to be true. The story goes that he only labeled his story fiction to avoid the lawsuit.

Take this for what it is, however, which is me recounting what I saw on a television documentary. As to the truth of the documentary, I don't know, and I'm too damn lazy right now to verify it through an internet search.

[Jackalope]

Seriously? Dan Brown? He wrote fiction and labeled it as such.

When Dan Brown was being sewed for copyright, I saw a television show about it, and one of the central issues was the copyright infringement was only possible because he wasn't labeling it fiction. He had taken the idea of Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene from another book in which the author claims it to be true. The story goes that he only labeled his story fiction to avoid the lawsuit.

Take this for what it is, however, which is me recounting what I saw on a television documentary. As to the truth of the documentary, I don't know, and I'm too damn lazy right now to verify it through an internet search.

FNM - just piggybacking on your post becuase my point dovetails nicely with yours.

Even if all of that were true, his work doesn't even close to meeting any kind of standards for scholarship. It's indistinguishable from fiction, and should be treated as such. To do othewise is intellectually dishonest, to say the lest.

[cratehorus]

Just so everyone knows Dan brown copied the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Which took decades of research to write and is an indepth look into templar history. The author is a devout catholic. It's fiction because it's about a "historical Jesus" which never existed.

Zeitgeist is just crap

How many ways are there to say it? The dying/resurrected vegetation god was a common motif in the Ancient Mediterrranean. "Jesus" was nothing special. In fact, the only thing that sets xtianity apart from the other cults was the viciousness of their followers in stamping out earlier religions.

http://www.denverseminary.edu/article/th...urrection/


( I deliberately put Professor Hess' position at the Denver Seminary in the quote so that xtians can shit bricks.

I like that even more than muffins.

I will add a opinion I express of how the Jesus story we read in the gospels got first written. Jews around turn of the first millennium CE had messianic expectation, which were main cause of three major wars against the Roman Empire. In the aftermath of the third and last one (Bar Kochba) some decided that the Messiah had already arrived, just that few noticed he had arrived.

Using some interpretation from the book of Daniel, they decided that this Messiah lived around 30AD. So they combed through the Old Testament to determine what such a Messiah would have done, the result being a lot of the stories we read in the Gospels. Also they cribbed a lot from the Historian Josephus in order to make the story sound historically credible.

the roman empire in 1000 bc was the size of one city? and Josephus wrote about him decades after his death............ Jesus never lived so how does he and Josephus relate to an old war?

[Minimalist]

Rome in 1,000 bc was a small collection of neolithic mud huts on the Palatine Hill. Five centuries later they threw out the Etruscans ( but kept a lot of their technical knowledge ) and began to grow by absorbing ( not destroying ) other Latin communities in Central Italy. Any actual empire building begins with the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BC where the Romans defeated Gauls in addition to various Italian tribes and came into contact with the Greeks of Tarentum and Crotona.

None of this has anything to do with Josephus, of course.

[cratehorus]

Rome in 1,000 bc was a small collection of neolithic mud huts on the Palatine Hill. Five centuries later they threw out the Etruscans ( but kept a lot of their technical knowledge ) and began to grow by absorbing ( not destroying ) other Latin communities in Central Italy. Any actual empire building begins with the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BC where the Romans defeated Gauls in addition to various Italian tribes and came into contact with the Greeks of Tarentum and Crotona.

None of this has anything to do with Josephus, of course.

So Josephus invented the myth? Josephus...... Joseph.... coincidence?

[FallentoReason]

Rome in 1,000 bc was a small collection of neolithic mud huts on the Palatine Hill. Five centuries later they threw out the Etruscans ( but kept a lot of their technical knowledge ) and began to grow by absorbing ( not destroying ) other Latin communities in Central Italy. Any actual empire building begins with the Battle of Sentinum in 295 BC where the Romans defeated Gauls in addition to various Italian tribes and came into contact with the Greeks of Tarentum and Crotona.

None of this has anything to do with Josephus, of course.

So Josephus invented the myth? Josephus...... Joseph.... coincidence?

I'm doing research on him and Plutarch. I believe (without the adequate evidence yet..) that Josephus ben Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew and maybe was involved with Mark.