Historicity of Jesus

[CapnAwesome]

Yeah I like the idea of him being a legion, a compilation of several different nutcase preacher types of the age. He's probably a mix of a few different guys, plenty of myth, "prophecies" and just loads of Chinese whispers and exaggeration.

So I think most likely he's not based on one single person anyway, if at all. Just my take on it.

I tend to think something similar as well. Obviously if you are an Atheist you have to believe the story is heavily embellished because of all the supernatural stuff in the new testament. If you hold the supernatural elements to be key to Jesus existing, then Jesus didn't exist. If however you just need the base non-supernatural elements of the story, that he lived around that time, collected followers, traveled and preached, claimed to be the Messiah, was killed by the Romans, it's hard to say that that person didn't exist. (or as you say, more than one of that person) That's why sometimes when people say 'Jesus didn't exist' I don't really know what they mean or where they are drawing the line. Whether it's based on one person or maybe more than one person is sort of hard to say. I mean it's all just speculation because we don't know how much gets muddled in the oral tradition before our earliest recordings.

Lets have a scenerio where in a thousand years there is a religion based around me. They say Cap'n Awesome was 100 feet tall, spent too much time on the internet and could sexually please women with just a look. Now would people say that I didn't exist just because I'm not 100 feet tall? That person didn't exist. Doesn't mean that it's not based on someone.