Rewriting the bible

[Minimalist]

It wasn't what we would call history today. It was meant to present an ideal.

I can't agree strongly enough with this observation. What instantly springs to mind is Livy's History of Rome from its Foundation. Whenever the Romans win a battle it is because the commander is cool and calm and retains tight control of his troops. Whenever they lose a battle it is because the commander is rash or headstrong and fails to keep control of his troops. Sometimes, disaster is averted when a second body of Roman soldiers come to the rescue under a commander who is, once again, cool and calm. In the aftermath the rash commander always admits he was wrong and they live happily ever after.

The names change but the description of the battles takes on a certain sameness if you read enough of it!

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When Romulus is described as the Son of God, born of a virgin, we understand that as a myth.

Well....you have to be careful with some of this internet stuff.

From Livy's History: The Romulus/Remus myth

http://global.oup.com/us/companion.websi...ives/livy/

Amulius drove his brother out and assumed the rule. He added foul deed to foul deed. He destroyed the male offspring of his brother and from Rhea Silvia, his brother’s daughter, he stole any hope of offspring by imposing perpetual virginity on her, when he chose her as a Vestal as if for the sake of honoring her.

But, as I see it, the origin of a very great city and the beginning of the greatest empire next to the power of the gods was predestined. When the Vestal was raped and gave birth to twins, she named Mars as the father of her children, either because she believed it was so or because a god was more respectable as the author of the deed.

So, she may have been a Vestal Virgin but she was not so chaste when she got pregnant. Even the primitive Romans weren't dumb enough to fall for that line of shit.

[quote]When Augustus is described as the Son of God, born of a mortal , we understand that as a myth.

Octavian was the adopted son of Gaius Julius Caesar who had in fact been declared a god by the senate. In those days the line between god and man could get a little blurry if you were successful enough.

The general point of that website is correct - there is nothing in early xtian bullshit which would have been really new to the Greco-Roman citizens of the empire. They'd heard it all before in one form or another.
Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" spends a lot of time exploring the common literary motifs which xtians adopted.

Just be wary when they start to push the analogies too far.