Aw, WTH....Let's Mix History and Philosophy

[Minimalist]

http://jesusneverexisted.com/seneca.html

Seneca and the Stoics.

In antiquity it was not the formalistic Roman religion, with its capricious gods and part-time priests, that offered answers to the perennial questions of existence – How shall I live? How shall I face death? etc. – but the schools of philosophy.

Adepts were practitioners of "the philosophical life", their maxims "medicine for the soul", their own lives exemplars of "right living". They offered moral guidance and a path of "personal growth", as well as speculations on creation, fate, and the gods.

The world was not on hold, waiting for a Christian godman to teach it ethics and morality. To ancient wisdom the fabricated "Jesus" added only an insufferable egocentricity.