Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[Secular Elf]

Sure, NP.  Lets just recap.  

The mythicist position is not, directly, a position on the existence of magic or miracles.  Magic and miracles do not make or break the mythicist position.

The mythicist position is not that -there couldn't have been- a man named yeshua.

The mythicist position is simple, the jesus that we have handed to us, the jesus of our cultural and literary inheritance, is mythical, is legendary.  That -no man- need be the kernel of that jesus, and that there is no man which can be extracted from the body of that jesus. That the "historical jesus" of the experts is an "any-man", and thus, effectively...... no man in particular or at all.

The Mythicist Position as explained by D.M. Murdock, aka "Acharya S.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63BNKhGAVRQ

---

They also assert the existence of "jesus the man".  So regardless of divinity......

That's not what early xtians thought of them.  Caused a shitstorm of controversy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism

Exactly.  Early Christianity, from its very beginning, was not a monolith of belief and dogma.  Right out of the gate this Christian believed one thing about who Jesus was and the other Christian another.  Again, from my own treatise about Early Christianity's history:

III. Christology of the Jewish Christians


The ancient Christological view of Jesus among Early Christians was certainly as varied as, and even more complex than, what today’s views of Jesus are. This is ever more evident among the very first Christians—the Jewish Christians of which there were three main groups: Nazarenes, Elkasites, and Ebionites.

The Nazarenes believed that Jesus was the Messiah that all Jews had been looking for. In the Jewish context, a messiah (Hebrew: mashiach, “anointed one”) is a king or High Priest traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil. He was never considered by Jews to be God or a pre-existent divine being or Son of God. In its native Jewish context, the messiah was meant to be a future Jewish king from the royal Davidic line, who will be anointed with holy anointing oil, to be the king of God’s kingdom and rule the Jewish people during a Messianic Age. Belief in the eventual coming of a future messiah is a fundamental part of Judaism even today.

The Elkasites believed that Jesus was a simple prophet who had been born before many times and would be born again frequently in the future. This belief in reincarnation indicates that the Elkasites were evolving towards a Gnostic direction.

The Ebionites regarded Jesus as the Messiah but did not consider him divine. They also zealously followed the Law of Moses and revered Jerusalem as the holiest city. They restricted table fellowship only to Gentiles who converted to Judaism.


IV. Christology of Gentile Christians

As Christianity spread among the Gentile population this diversity of opinion of who Jesus was became even more complex. The three most prominent of these views within Early Christianity were Gnosticism, Adoptionism, and Docetism.

Gnosticism was a religious expression that originated from Greek philosophy. Gnostics viewed the material world with suspicion. It was considered as being evil or as being a prison. This evil world or prison was created by a spirit that was either a fallen being or an evil one. The god of the material world was called a demiurge. Gnostics called the demiurge by many different names, depending on the group or sect. Gnosticism came in two varieties, the older Pagan one and the newer Christian Gnosticism (basically Christianity influenced by Gnosticism), and there were Judaic Gnostics as well, such as the Sethians. Whether Pagan, Judaic, or Christian, all Gnostics believed that one can liberate one’s soul from the material world through secret knowledge, or gnosis. So Gnostic Christians regarded the God of the Hebrew Bible (Torah) as the demiurge and identified Jesus as the Savior spirit sent from the true God from the realm of light into the material world to liberate the souls trapped there. Of the Early Christians whose theology was markedly gnostic in flavor were such groups as the Ebionites, Cerdonians, Colorbasians, Naassenes, Ophites, and Simonians, among a few others.

Many other Early Christians regarded Jesus in the light of Adoptionism, that is, that Jesus was born human but only became divine by God adopting him at his baptism. The Ebionites, even though they were gnostic in their cosmic view, were the first to hold the adoptionist position regarding Jesus’ divinity.

Still other Early Christians saw Jesus in a totally different way, called Docetism (Greek, “illusionary,” “phantom”). In this view it is claimed that Jesus’ was pure spirit and incorporeal, therefore his physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion, because he could not physically die. This view was a prominent feature among dualistic gnostic Christians.

Lastly, there were a group of Christians who are called by theological historian Bart D. Ehrman “proto-orthodox.” The Proto-orthodox Christians held to the view that Jesus was the son of God and therefore was divine in nature in both spirit and body, inseparable, which was a theology in its essence Pauline Christianity. These Proto-orthodox Christians held their view as being the one and only correct view, therefore they further saw themselves as the only Christians who were true of faith, and regarded other Christians with other positions of Jesus’ divinity with suspicion and distrust. The Proto-orthodox Christians would eventually, by the 4th Century CE, have greater influence over the formation of the New Testament canon and evolve into Orthodox Christianity.