Richard Carrier - The Hero Savior Analogy

[Mudhammam]

You mean...some people made some shit up...?  

You... think... that's our area of... dispute...?  

For what reason do we come up with any religious belief?  A real or perceived need.  What are we talking about here, though?

Right.  And the parallels to the rise of Christianity typically center around historical figures.  No need to treat the Christians by a special standard, as, er, Christians do.

Is there any relevance to who created it, in our discussion of a historical jesus, or are you looking for something else to quibble about?  

Well, yeah, when, you know, that's precisely what everything pertaining to the historical record suggests, and then some group comes along claiming to have special knowledge about how this particular text should be read, but provide no probable or reasonable justification for doing so.... hmm.  Am I talking about Christians or mythicists here?  Frankly, it would seem like both.

You're asking the equivalent of "who came up with the boy-meets-girl literary format".  It doesn't matter, it existed by the time people believed in a christ.

Nice red herring.

You're still moving forward under the assumption that the people who advanced that narrative came up with it.  They didn't.  

No, actually, I said it didn't matter.  You're left with the same fundamental unresolved issues whether "Mark" or "Paul" created the narrative or received it from someone else (though they claim to have been in some way connected with the people who knew Jesus)

They advanced it because they believed it.  The original intent of the story would be something that only the original author could answer...and we don't know who that guy was, or collection of guys, or even what that story -was-...so....?

Right.  So, following the evidence, given that they all presume to have met people who knew Jesus and details of his biography, including his crucifixion, and the time of composition is relatively early, as in a couple of decades rather than a couple of centuries, I see no reason to grant the hypothesis that the figure of Jesus existed in myth at any point before he became, in your view, "Euheremized."

 I;m sure you'll bable on about reading comprehension vaguely when confronted with you own words...just as you did above.  

Yet... you don't seem to engage with my own words, or reproduce them when your caught making shit up, alleging I said it, when nothing in my posts which you could produce says I did.  Is this a habit of yours?

Everything I say, what have I said?  WTF is wrong with you, lol?  

You're kind of boring me at this point.  Same unsupported assertions every time.

What we -have- are myths of a christ, some people believe they are legends of a "jesus".  The existence of myth and legend do not depend upon conspiracy....nor do they depend upon historicity.  The mythicist position is that a mythical religious figure was historicized as legend -as is so often the case- (it's so common there's a term for it - which you've already been made aware of).  If you want to discuss the mythicist position..discuss that.  Not some conspiracy shit of your own devising.  Thx.

I've read some of the mythicist literature, but thanks for the summary.  Unfortunately, the two serious scholars who take your view (Price and Carrier) are unconvincing, and quite frankly, write bunk, to say nothing of style.  I'm sorry to see your attempt to follow that line, but without the knowledge or even an argument.

See above.  No one needed to "conspire" to create a hercules, nor did anyone need to "conspire" to create a jesus.  

Jesus, man.  How ignorant are you about the development of Greek myth and the differences between the history of that people, versus those relevant and influencing factors which pervaded Jewish culture, particularly in the first-century; and the appearance of a spontaneous and relatively quick rise of the strain that became recognized as distinctly Christian thought?  How is anyone supposed to take you seriously...? Your posts are downright painful.

We don't know how many (or the contents) of the stories they chose from except in those cases where they flatly declared something a heresy.  The development of canon, as far as we can tell, took centuries (knocking the whole conspiracy song and dance out of the water...those would be particularly long-lived co-conspirators....don;t you think?).  If you want a specific example you'll have to decide which part of the canon, specifically, you would like to consider.  

What's your point here again?

This it's why it's useful to ask before you start slinging mud, numbskull.  My position is that people historicized characters in a collection of myths as legends, ex post facto (as they assumed, anyway)...for a variety of reasons...not the least of which...because they really believed it.  Further, that this myth turned percieved legend..which is all we have and all we have evidence for, is a sufficent explanation for both the narrative and subsequent belief in it;s contents.  That no "historical jesus" is in evidence, and is an unnecessary and extraneous assumption.   This is, conveniently, the mythicist position.  Now that you know what it is, or at least should know what it is, you can finally begin discussing it.

Or not, you can keep crowing about conspiracies like a loon and calling me names, if you like.

Again, we know your position.  "Sufficient explanation" means many different things to different people I suppose, as it does to Christians, or mythicists, or scientifically-minded historians.