RE: Paul's 500 witnesses.
May 7, 2017 at 9:34 pm
(This post was last modified: May 7, 2017 at 9:43 pm by Brian37.)
(May 7, 2017 at 9:18 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I endorse "The Myth of Persecution" by Candida Moss. It shreds the bullshit of xtian martyrology which started as being a way to con the dolts and ended up being a cash cow.
I have an electronic version. If you'd like it, PM an email address.
Would love to read it, but I haven't used e-mail in billions of years, I don't even know my own passwords on my cable or gmail account.
If you were to pm it on FB I could access it. But I could google the title too and maybe order it myself.
I never use e-mail. I contact everyone I know through pm on FB and twitter and at best phone text.
I just read the wiki article on that book and author, and yes, I agree, not just in Christianity, but in all of human history, the local label of any and all religions has a tendency to exaggerate reality even if parts of the legend are based on some minor reality.
Socrates is a very good older parallel story to the Jesus character. In Plato's apology Socrates pisses off all the teachers, senators, and oracles and is characterized as upsetting the social norms, he is the upstart, the provoker. The powers that be don't like him upsetting their social norms, so they put him on trial, and convict him of corrupting the youth of Athens and force him to drink Hemlock.
I see that as no different as the Jesus motif outside details.
