Regarding Jesus

[Confused Ape]

Interesting discussion but as H. L. Mencken noted:

Either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn’t. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if he did not, then it is sheer nonsense.

The only way he could have risen from the dead was if people thought he was dead and he wasn't. Three days dead is nothing compared to -

Zombie gran: 95-year-old Chinese woman terrifies neighbours by climbing out of her coffin six days after she 'died'

The ‘dead’ woman was laid in her coffin on February 19, two days after she was discovered.

However, Mr Qingwang chose not to nail the coffin shut ahead of the planned burial on February 24.

The day before the funeral, Mr Qingwang arrived at his neighbour’s house to find the coffin empty and the corpse gone.

"We were so terrified, and immediately asked the neighbours to come for help," he said.

After searching for the missing body, the villagers were stunned to find Mrs Xiufeng sitting on a stool in her kitchen cooking.

Eat your heart out Biblical Jesus - somebody is twice as miraculous as you were. Meanwhile, Angelo Hays

(born ca 1918) was a French celebrity and inventor. He is best known for having survived a premature burial for two days.

These people aren't the only examples of this kind of thing. If there was a real Jesus who was thought to be dead when he wasn't it's likely that his followers would have thought his waking up as miraculous. This still wouldn't make the Christian religion plausible, though, because coming back from the dead like this doesn't require a virgin mother and a divine father.

All the apologetic attempts to find a "historical" jesus miss the point that unless he did what Mencken says it doesn't matter in the least. Xtians do not worship the man - they worship the magic tricks. And without the tricks "jesus" is a nobody.

Why does everything have to hinge on what Christians believe in before it's relevant? If there ever was a real man who was obscured by myths and legends he would have been an ordinary human. People might have believed he performed miracles because people still believe in faith healers in the 21st century. If he rose from the dead it would have been because he was never dead in the first place. Even myths and legends being attached to him doesn't make him unique because thousands of humans have had myths and legends attached to them.

A real Jesus isn't required for the Christian religion to get started, of course. The reason will still be ordinary, though, because that's reality for you.

And all this sets aside the issue that once you strip out all the supernatural from the Gospel biography, you've gutted 90% of the story.

This is what Judaism has done and the 10% that's left is far more interesting than the myths and legends from an historical point of view. This still doesn't mean there actually was a real Jesus, of course.

If you were to tell the story of a mortal Jesus, it would similarly bare little resemblance to the story in the Gospels.

So what? Jews write articles about an ordinary human Jesus where his life bears little resemblance to the story in the Gospels. According to Judaism he was a failed messiah who had some followers and got executed like a lot of other nuisances from a Roman point of view.

The story of Jesus IS about the miracles and the divinity.

That's like saying the story of Alexander the Great is about the myths and legends that grew up about him.

Alexander As Myth

The legend of Alexander started spreading right after Alexander's death and overshadowed his real life. Alexander became a mythical figure, a theme for folk-songs, epics and anecdotes. Even his name was modified or distorted.

The legend had little in common with the true story of Alexander: The Byzantines made of Alexander a Saint while the Mohammedans include his deeds in the Koran, to mention only two extremes.

Wondrous Signs Before the Birth of Alexander the Great

His mother dreamed on the night before her wedding, that she was penetrated by a thunderbolt. Fire spread out in all directions.

Plutarch writes: "The night before the consummation of their marriage, she dreamed that a thunderbolt fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose divided flames dispersed themselves all about, and then were extinguished."

Alexander's father Philip looked inside his wife's bedroom and saw her in the embrace of a snake. This was interpreted to be the god Zeus-Ammon, who was considered by some to have been Alexander's father.

The fact that Alexander the Great really existed doesn't prove that there was a real man who ended up as the Jesus in the Bible, though.