(May 28, 2009 at 4:03 pm)Kyuuketsuki Wrote:(May 28, 2009 at 3:37 pm)dagda Wrote: Now chatpilot, I must ask you before we go any further, are you saying that not only Christ is complete fiction, but his followers are as well? Also, how do you think the 'legend' of Christ arose?
How do you think Aztec, Norse, Mesopotamian, Roman and Egyptian myths arose?
The simple truth Dagda is that you believe in one more myth than most of us and, as someone else said, when you truly understand why you dismiss those other myths you will understand why we dismiss yours.
Kyu
Perhaps you are not aware of the original meaning of myth; they were stories which held a grain of truth. Some myths hold more truth than others. I dismiss no myths because each one of them may give a glimpse at a long forgotten past. For instance it is unlikely in the extreme that one man (Gilgamesh) built the walls of Ur. However, the myth is thought to mean that Gilgamesh was the architect or patron of the project. The mistake many on this forum seem to be making is dismissing myths outright. Even if myths held no historical fact, they would still be usefully to study the psychology of the people who wrote them. As it stands, most myths do hold historical fact to varying degrees and, as such, are all the more valuable.
Dismissing Christ as fable hinders a true understanding of the Christian movement, and, I think, trying to understand the underlaying fact hidden in the New Testament would be a far more productive (and maybe more beneficial to atheism!). If Christ is based on a real man (which I think he is) then far more interesting questions develop which are far more uncomfortable to mainstream Christianity.
'I far as I know, the Romans were scrupulous record keepers and documented practically everything. It seems strange then that the only record of Jesus appears in the Bible.'
Yes, the Romans were great bureaucrats. However, were you aware that-unlike the common stereotype-they wrote on papyri and worse? Out with Egypt very little Roman records have survived because the paper they kept the majority of there records on tended to be such poor quality. The records which have survived, however, do seem to indicate that Christ was a cult leader in Judea.
We must also look at other factors when considering the climate Christ taught in. At the time Judea was not a full province in the Empire. Before 70AD Rome allowed the Sanhedrin and local tribal leaders to govern most of what is Israel. The Roman presence was a small auxiliary (e.g. not even citizens) force which had little authority out with Jerusalem and a few of the larger sea ports. In comparison to provinces such as Egypt or Greece, the record keeping was not extensive. And there violent expulsion in the 70'AD did not do wonders for there records either.
The governing Jewish body, on the other hand, were educated men. They would have kept records (they were in charge of tax collecting etc). However, these tended to be stored in the Temple and other such buildings in Jerusalem. After the Jewish revolt in 70AD and again in the 120'sAD the province of Judea and Jerusalem in particular were completely torched along with any records they held (Roman or otherwise).
What is more, in the Roman Empire only 10% of the population could read or write. With no printing presses, everything had to be copied by hand. This meant that bureaucratic documents were not wildly copied in the home provinces, never mind a semi-provincial backwater like Judea.
When we put together these factors and the fact that we do not know Christ's real name, is it any wonder we have little record of him? What records that have survived may contradict on many events in Christ's life (e.g. is he divine or a fraud?) none even hint that he is a fable (that includes the extra-biblical ones such as the Nag Hammadi scrolls and Tacticus.)
