The Jesus story has details that is most definitely made up i just realized!!!

[mordant]

They don’t actually agree on that, at all.  All that historicists agree on, was that there was some guy.  That’s the consensus being referenced by the “the majority of scholars” comments.


I don’t envy their jobs or positions.  It’s a tough line of work given the likelihood of ever coming across any additional biographic detail about this assumed person who was the hypothetical patient zero of a globe spanning faith with a penchant for revision.

As to the sermon on the mount...that isn’t required to be myth for Christ to be myth.  A lot of things thought to be wise, ostensibly said by someone, were crammed into the mouth of the character.

I keep trying to stress this.  If I wrote that bugs bunny told the “I have a dream” speech....the real existence of mlk and that speech won’t make the bunny more if s real person or less of a cartoon.

- there’s no “maybe”, not even among historicists.  They understand that the details of the character were chosen for their theological importance, not biographical accuracy.  They assume that there simply must have been some guy close enough (for government work) to the character they expected from the messiah.  To get people writing, talking, worked up.

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Mind, I’m not arguing for Mythicism here.  I see no point between us, just trying to present mythicism in a more accurate light than the derisive conspiracy theory that filters down to us through apologetics and professional defense, lol.  It’s nit about whether or not there is legitimate human detail in the text.  Or that nothing even remotely like the (potentially historical) events of the gospel ever happened.  It’s about the order of development of the character.

If a man or many men were grafted onto an existing myth, the mythicists are right.  That’s what they’re arguing.  That the character of Christ in the New Testament never existed, was never a man.  That there isn’t any specific Jesus-the-man in there.

Exactly right. The miracle-working god-man of the gospels is not what historicists are arguing for. They are arguing, to some degree or other, for the fabulist Jesus mythos being rooted in some way in "some guy". Whether that's "based on" or "inspired by" the public ministry of that "guy", or entirely made up, no one can say.

I have various reasons for leaning Mythicist, but if I'm totally wrong, it presents no problem at all for me because that would say zilch about, and add zero credibility to, the Jesus mythos. Your analogy to Bugs Bunny being a cartoon character no matter what words you put in his mouth, is very apt.