(February 23, 2019 at 1:19 pm)Jehanne Wrote: According to Professor Bart Ehrman, Lecture 10, in his New Testament Great Courses series, modern scholars possess hundreds of pagan (non-Christian, non-Jewish) sources from the 1st century. Why is it that none of these sources even mention the existence of Jesus?
Because he didn't exist. The letter sequence that spells out the name "Jesus" does not exist in the OT. The first book was not written until 70 years after the alleged death claim.
It is true that a movement that lead to Christianity did exist, otherwise the religion would not exist. The name Jesus was a common name in that region, so it is far more likely that a splinter sect of Hebrews who didn't like the old interpretations created a character like Superman or Batman to compete with the other sects.
What did not happen is the idea that a upstart pissing the local and Roman leaders off would go unnoticed by outsiders. The Jesus motif is nothing more than humans creating a hero after the fact out of a sense of political oppression/martyrdom complex.
The same pissing off the wise/authorities motif, can be found in Plato's Apology in which Socrates questioned authority only to be tried in the Senate and convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens, and forced to drink Hemlock.
Hero motifs are rampant in all of antiquity worldwide. They really reflect nothing more than our species desire to compete and survive.
