As an atheist, I fail to understand why this topic stirs up such a hornet's nest of emotion.
Could there have been an actual Jesus wandering the Levant 2,000 years ago? Sure. The place was chock full of them at the time. The actual evidence is pretty thin, but I have no visceral objection to the magic book being based on a real individual, or an amalgam of several real individuals. All that gets you to is that there may have been some bloke or blokes stirring things in the Levant. Well, stop the presses.
Josephus is pretty much accepted to be a later forgery and Tacitus referred to some rubes out in the boonies, so that leaves the gospels themselves. Or does it? Because there are other surviving texts which didn't make the cut for the bible. Why? Because these cast a different light. By and large, atheists get interested when these other texts are introduced. Christians, not so much. They get all bent out of shape.
As for the mythicists, to me they seem more agenda driven. For whatever reason, they have a problem with the various tales being based on an actual person or several persons. I don't know why. Either way does not sway my atheism. So what if there was some bloke called jesus. There's millions of them in Mexico.
Of course, whatever jesus was swiftly followed by Eleazar ben Ya'ir for example. Another apocalyptic/messianic figure (about AD70) Strangely, we have a whole crapton of evidence for him. Obviously, it is because he gave us the whole siege of Masada, a high profile event that was copiously documented. This begs a question.
If jesus was doing such high profile things, why did Eleazar ben Ya'ir get documented yet he did not? The inevitable conclusion is that jesus, assuming he existed, didn't really do anything remarkable or worth reporting. Just another wandering desert preacher among many. Or a mashup of a few such wingnuts.
Could there have been an actual Jesus wandering the Levant 2,000 years ago? Sure. The place was chock full of them at the time. The actual evidence is pretty thin, but I have no visceral objection to the magic book being based on a real individual, or an amalgam of several real individuals. All that gets you to is that there may have been some bloke or blokes stirring things in the Levant. Well, stop the presses.
Josephus is pretty much accepted to be a later forgery and Tacitus referred to some rubes out in the boonies, so that leaves the gospels themselves. Or does it? Because there are other surviving texts which didn't make the cut for the bible. Why? Because these cast a different light. By and large, atheists get interested when these other texts are introduced. Christians, not so much. They get all bent out of shape.
As for the mythicists, to me they seem more agenda driven. For whatever reason, they have a problem with the various tales being based on an actual person or several persons. I don't know why. Either way does not sway my atheism. So what if there was some bloke called jesus. There's millions of them in Mexico.
Of course, whatever jesus was swiftly followed by Eleazar ben Ya'ir for example. Another apocalyptic/messianic figure (about AD70) Strangely, we have a whole crapton of evidence for him. Obviously, it is because he gave us the whole siege of Masada, a high profile event that was copiously documented. This begs a question.
If jesus was doing such high profile things, why did Eleazar ben Ya'ir get documented yet he did not? The inevitable conclusion is that jesus, assuming he existed, didn't really do anything remarkable or worth reporting. Just another wandering desert preacher among many. Or a mashup of a few such wingnuts.
