Where did the Jesus myth come from?

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

Lots of interesting posts (including about waffles )... but what is wrong with the Zeitgeist excerpt? All those facts were false? or?

I think it's important to be very careful about this topic. Christian apologists are fond of "poisoning the well", harping on single mistakes to discredit the whole. There is a lot of sloppy research out there that I've learned to be wary of.

Let me use another part of Zeitgeist to underscore my point. The second part is about how 9/11 was an inside job. Now, I think that the Bush misadministration was negligent in "keeping us safe" and obsessed with Saddam. I believe 9/11 happened because the administration was asleep at the switch, not complicit. I also believe that Bush, Cheney, et al were eager to take advantage of the situation to lie us into a costly war, line the pockets of their oil and defense contractor interests, etc. None of that requires speculation in elaborate conspiracy theories. It only relies on the facts. Those that scream "9/11 was an inside job" discredit Bush critics.

Same thing with Jesus. I don't believe in the miracle working godman and I think the Gospels are mythmaking and urban legend. However, when it comes to the historicity of an alleged mortal Jesus, I'm careful about my sources because there's some wild conspiracy theories out there akin to the Truthers.

I was once in some apologism class and we were covering the mythisist theories and the guy leading the class seriously told us to watch Zeitgeist to understand the mythisist position, as if that was at all representative of the whole movement.

Another similar tacit I've seen in apologist books is mixing up hacks like Dan Brown with reputable phd scholars. The average reader of these books won't know the difference and winds up thinking that all the different views and arguments are just as crazy as the Da Vinci Code, or Zeitgeist, or ancient aliens.