RE: Five Strikes Against Jesus
December 17, 2016 at 1:57 am
(This post was last modified: December 17, 2016 at 1:58 am by Minimalist.)
About 20 years ago a man named Thomas Thompson wrote a book called The Mythic Past. In it he argued:
The book, which was an expansion of his doctoral dissertation, led to Thompson being villified by nutty jesus freaks, led in a large degree by Der Popenfuhrer, Herr von Ratzinger...later pope Benedict. Yet today, with the assistance of archaeology, Thompson's position regarding the bullshit stories of the OT is now the mainstream view.
Quote:The Jewish people's historical claims to a small area of land bordering the eastern Mediterranean are not only the foundation for the modern state of Israel, they are also at the very heart of Judeo-Christian belief. Yet in The Mythic Past, Thomas Thompson argues that such claims are grounded in literary myth, not history. Among the author's startling conclusions are these:• There never was a "united monarch" of Israel in biblical times• We can no longer talk about a time of the Patriarchs• The entire notion of "Israel" and its history is a literary fiction.
The book, which was an expansion of his doctoral dissertation, led to Thompson being villified by nutty jesus freaks, led in a large degree by Der Popenfuhrer, Herr von Ratzinger...later pope Benedict. Yet today, with the assistance of archaeology, Thompson's position regarding the bullshit stories of the OT is now the mainstream view.
