One question for Christians

[Statler Waldorf]

. How would we know Jack and Beanstalk isn't a real story?

It never claims to be.

The general criteria is if therte is anything funny and supernatural going on then that part of the story at least isn't real.

The general criteria according to whom? I am not aware of any such criteria used by historians.

It works out very nicely on the Iliad so why can't we apply the same method to the Bible and the gospels?

We do not reject the historicity of the Iliad because of it’s supernatural events. It’s not a very well attested document (earliest manuscripts date to 500 years after the original was written) and it is not written as historical narrative like the New Testament is.

When God Brimstoned Sodom and Gomorrah and turned Lots wife into a pillar of salt that could have been a volcano for instance. We've got all this in the bag.

You’re confusing mechanism with agency, God may have used a volcano to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah; however, I doubt it was a volcano that turned Lot’s wife into salt.

He could happily have existed as a normal man without any supernatural powers at all. Perhaps he believed he had some but that's not the same thing as having them and his followers could easily have beefed him up a little. They told stories of the miraculous powers of the divine Roman Emperors for instance and people took all that business seriously at the time.

Why are you assuming naturalism when you read scripture? I see no necessity for that assumption. Secondly, I am not aware of any Roman leader being described as having supernatural powers by the New Testament. It is not reasonable to assume that the writers of the New Testament who personally knew Jesus and his family would ascribe feats to him that he never accomplished all the time knowing it would get them persecuted and killed by the Jewish leadership or Romans. What’s the motive? If I knew that my friend didn’t have supernatural powers, and if I knew that if I told people he did they would stone me I am certainly not going to tell anyone he had supernatural powers let alone write it down in a signed letter. Let’s be reasonable here.