(September 18, 2018 at 8:15 pm)mrj Wrote: There have been several theories proposed that Jesus was not a real person. For example, he is a divine being that lived his life in the space between heaven and earth. I think Richard Carrier proposed this.
Carrier does not 'propose this'.
Carrier, and other scholars (including Bart Ehrman) only mention this because it was believed by some of the earliest Christians sects.
Quote:So one question I have, is if Jesus was completely made up, why is his name "Jesus"?
I would think based on prophecy, a 'fake' Jesus would have been named Immanuel. Not Jesus.
If you are going to make it up, you would make it up so that minor discrepancies such as this would be avoided.
Don't you think, then, that the gospels were at least based on a real person?
"Jesus" was not a name in first century Palestine. Jesus is an Romanization of the name Yeshua.
I think it is quite possible that the Yeshua/Jesus character in the Bible was based on a real person, or persons. Who cares?
The problem is, even if Yeshua was a historical person, that does not offers zero evidence that he was a god-man, who performed magic.
Not only that, whoever the Yeshua/Jesus person was, he would not recognize the portrayal or stories about himself in the Bible. The person in the Bible, even if based on a real person, is completely mythologized.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.