The Deceptive Mechanisms

[FallentoReason]

Myths like Hercules were written in hyperbolic style to influence public thought or to entertain. Read a myth and the gospels side-by-side and tell me which sounds more like a personal account to you.

Neither, and that's exactly the point. Read the Gospels and Josephus side-by-side and tell me which one sounds more like genuine history.

There is an understatement in the gospels which we have been taught to think of as "Western". However, they are written in a time and region where writing styles were more flowery and blunt and intended to impress the reader. Hercules' life indeed has evidence that should be considered. But when we hold his story up to history, it is weakly supported.

Agreed.

If the Passion of the Christ was set entirely in the clouds of heaven, or a mountain nobody knew about, I would view it much the same way. But we have archaeological evidence.

Just like we have evidence of Troy from the Iliad. Still, for some trivial reason you choose Jesus over any other myth.

We have an explosion of converts willing to die for the faith.

It's not an uncommon motif for man to die for what he believes in, which has nothing to do with what's true or not. Plus, what you should have gathered from the OP is that Paul used deceptive mechanisms to lure in the Jew. From the website:

Paul's epistles predate the written Gospels. Their purpose was to build and sustain a Church, and one of their most prominent aspects was their apologetic content. Paul used every means at his disposal to convince others of the validity of his doctrines. He invoked the authority of the soon-to-be "Old Testament," making abundant references to support his arguments. He claimed that "[w]hatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning" (Romans 15:4), rendering it into a precursor and prologue to his theology. And lest anyone dispute their value, he and his successors need only insist that "[a]ll Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3:16). That these Scriptures had been subjected to severe abuse in their interpretation was a problem that could only be paved over with guile.

A religion began, and every beginning needs a catalyst--a person and an event. Jesus has a purpose and a background--myths have neither.

And yet myths took off still. You've disproven your own argument therefore leaving the doors open still.

I think we can both agree the evidence is stronger for Jesus than the old Greek and Roman myths.

Agreed. I'd still rather not trust anonymous authors who never claim to have seen anything for themselves, who didn't write in an historical format like their contemporaries did & whose documents got edited over and over again. That's just me though.

Just because we said past events require a certain type of evidence doesn't mean we can't start ranking that evidence. In fact, it is the only evidence that can be ranked. When we weigh truth and lie in our minds, we are consciously or subconsciously comparing "traces" to our experiences. The moment evidence of any sort enters our mind, it becomes subjective.

The problem is that even before it enters your mind, it is known that the evidence itself is dubious. There's nothing credible about the Bible, and keep in mind, that the NT specifically is the "battle of the fittest" between all competing ideologies. Even then it doesn't hold any water.