(November 12, 2014 at 7:31 pm)Minimalist Wrote:My argument is that one or more of those fantastic dime-a-dozen fables got attached to a person who really existed, and the cracks show because what was accidentally preserved of his authentic teaching doesn't mesh very well with the fairy tales.Quote:From my perspective you are clutching at straws to deny the historical existence of JC. I suppose from your perspective, I am clutching at straws to affirm his historical existence.
Yes. I have no straws to clutch at, though. That is the problem. Not straw #1. Like you, I certainly have no attachment to the story. I suspect where we differ is that you are still attaching a historical plausibility to the idea which I simply cannot see. What we know of Greco-Roman literature at the time is that such tales were a dime a dozen. It's a little more disquieting when it happens in our time.
In Carrier's book he mentions that in 1945, Betty Crocker was named the second most popular woman in America by Fortune Magazine, behind Eleanor Roosevelt. http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitc...y-crocker/
The only problem is that Betty Crocker is fictitious - a creation of an advertising campaign in 1921. So we have evidence for how such tales can grow even in relatively modern times. Then of course there are the somewhat earlier examples of William Tell and Ned Ludd.
The point being that a real person is not necessary for tales to grow. They didn't have Snopes back then.
I'd never heard the one about Betty Crocker. My all-time favorite example of myth-making is the story of the Angels of Mons. Within a few months everyone in Britain believed it although the author protested that he had just been writing a totally dictional short story.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
