Regarding Jesus

[Confused Ape]

Not, in any way shape or form, jesus, or even worth calling jesus.

Any real man underneath all the myths and legends would be nothing like he's portrayed in the Bible. Myths and legends can be attached to real people - Francis Drake is an example of this. We definitely know Drake existed.

Except that people don't need to hallucinate in order to tell a ghost story, nor does there have a to be any actual person upon whom the ghost is based.

Ghost Stories - Visits From The Deceased

The dead stay with us, that much is clear. They remain in our hearts and minds, of course, but for many people they also linger in our senses—as sights, sounds, smells, touches or presences. Grief hallucinations are a normal reaction to bereavement but are rarely discussed, because people fear they might be considered insane or mentally destabilised by their loss. As a society we tend to associate hallucinations with things like drugs and mental illness, but we now know that hallucinations are common in sober healthy people and that they are more likely during times of stress.

A Common Hallucination
Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the point where feeling the presence of the deceased is the norm rather than the exception. One study, by the researcher Agneta Grimby at the University of Goteborg, found that over 80 percent of elderly people experience hallucinations associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement, as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved’s passing. As a marker of how vivid such visions can seem, almost a third of the people reported that they spoke in response to their experiences. In other words, these weren’t just peripheral illusions: they could evoke the very essence of the deceased.

Why would we assume any of that? Why do we have to insist upon jesus?

I'm just looking at possibilities based on what 21st century peoples' brains produce as anomalous experiences and wondering if that kind of thing had anything to do with the start of the Jesus myth. After all, brains would have been the same 2,000 years ago.

Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

All it would need is a couple of grief hallucinations and somebody associating it with the above tradition if the interpretation of the tablet is correct. An urban legend would have been born and travellers could have taken it around the Roman Empire. The story then grew in the telling - people decided that the resurrected messiah's tomb had to be empty. Anybody who could do something miraculous as rise from the dead had to have had a miraculous birth like other characters in mythology etc. etc.

I don't see why the remote possibility there was a real man buried under all the myths and legends should be any threat to atheism.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm just looking at possibilities based on what 21st century peoples' brains produce as anomalous experiences and wondering if that kind of thing had anything to do with the start of the Jesus myth. After all, brains would have been the same 2,000 years ago.

Trouble with that, from my POV, is that to even begin down the road of such wonderings you have to favor an incredibly complicated and convoluted scenario over another, simpler and very well evidenced explanation. It's just a story. It -may be- that pixies put dew on the petals of flowers......but so long as water behaves that way regardless of the presence of pixies - I'm gonna go with "That's condensation asshats". Know what I mean?

I don't understand why we would go about salvaging a narrative that doesn't need salvaging in the first place. Nobody says "well, maybe people hallucinated Cu Chulainn's battle spasms" - do they?

[Confused Ape]

Trouble with that, from my POV, is that to even begin down the road of such wonderings you have to favor an incredibly complicated and convoluted scenario over another, simpler and very well evidenced explanation. It's just a story.

What's complicated about it? A grief hallucination starting an urban legend about a messiah doesn't strike me as any odder than people thinking they saw Elvis after he'd died. Also, an urban legend that got passed round and ended up with different versions would explain why the four gospels have so many contradictions. The writers could have just recorded the travellers' tales they happened to hear.

If it's just a story based on nothing how did it get started? Who made it up and why? Another vague possibility is that there was a real person underneath the Paul of Tarsus myth. Maybe he decided to start a new cult because some people do that.

PS: I live in the UK where there are a lot of ghost stories and legends about real people. I suppose that's why I don't think that the idea of a grief hallucination starting an urban legend is complicated.

[The Grand Nudger]

What's complicated about it? A grief hallucination starting an urban legend about a messiah doesn't strike me as any odder than people thinking they saw Elvis after he'd died. Also, an urban legend that got passed round and ended up with different versions would explain why the four gospels have so many contradictions. The writers could have just recorded the travellers' tales they happened to hear.

Or- again, it's just a story.

If it's just a story based on nothing how did it get started? Who made it up and why? Another vague possibility is that there was a real person underneath the Paul of Tarsus myth. Maybe he decided to start a new cult because some people do that.

Since when is any story "based on nothing"? Conversely, is Dracula "based on" vampires...or Vlad Tepish? No.

PS: I live in the UK where there are a lot of ghost stories and legends about real people. I suppose that's why I don't think that the idea of a grief hallucination starting an urban legend is complicated.

Plenty of legendaries in the US as well. Some of which actually have no relation to the character upon which the legend is formed - and were ensconsed in absentia of knowledge on that front with regards to anything but the characters name. Some were self promoted. All were stories, no more and no less. No one hallucinated Paul Bunyon or Big John or Wild Bill, eh?

(and consider for a moment, the one that we do know existed in a concrete way- bears the least resemblance to his story double)

[Confused Ape]

Or- again, it's just a story.

So how did it get started?

Since when is any story "based on nothing"? Conversely, is Dracula "based on" vampires...or Vlad Tepish? No.

Bram Stoker based his book on both vampire legends and Vlad Tepesh whose real name was something like Vlad Dracula depending on how it was spelled.

His Romanian patronymic Dragwlya (or Dragkwlya)[3] Dragulea, Dragolea, Drăculea,[4][5] is a diminutive of the epithet Dracul carried by his father Vlad II, who in 1431 was inducted as a member of the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order founded by Sigismund of Hungary in 1408. Dracul is the Romanian definite form, the -ul being the suffixal definite article (deriving from Latin ille). The noun drac "dragon" itself continues Latin draco. Thus, Dracula literally means "Son of the Dragon". In Modern Romanian, the word drac has adopted the meaning of "devil" (the term for "dragon" now being balaur or dragon). This has led to misinterpretations of Vlad's epithet as characterizing him as "devilish".

We know how this story got started along with who started it and why. Did a story teller decide to compose a tale about a messiah to tell in market places for money and people thought the tale was true?

Plenty of legendaries in the US as well. Some of which actually have no relation to the character upon which the legend is formed - and were ensconsed in absentia of knowledge on that front with regards to anything but the characters name.

Which could apply to some failed messiah who became an urban legend.

Some were self promoted. All were stories, no more and no less. No one hallucinated Paul Bunyon or Big John or Wild Bill, eh?

Paul Bunyan is a fictional character who may or may not have been based on folklore. Big John is a song. People don't have grief hallucinations about fictional characters.

(and consider for a moment, the one that we do know existed in a concrete way- bears the least resemblance to his story double)

Wild Bill was a real person who ended up with stories told about him.

There's all kinds of reasons why the story of Jesus got started. I suggested two of them. I'm interested in hearing other people's suggestions.

[The Grand Nudger]

So how did it get started?

How did this thread get started? People opened their (in this case digital) mouths. Nothing more wondrous or complicated need be invoked.

Bram Stoker based his book on both vampire legends and Vlad Tepesh whose real name was something like Vlad Dracula depending on how it was spelled .

Actually...he based his book upon his conservative and ethnocentric british views with regards to the influx of eastern europeans and their effect on society (specifically "good british women"). Vlad was a sufficiently eastern european sounding name. He considered (and wrote the narrative for) others. His knowledge of what you've presented was minimal, and would amount to telling a story about a told story. If he -had- known more about eastern european culture (to include all of what you mentioned) then he might not have been such an overt bigot. But then again, he might have been so anyway. Like a great many other good works of fiction, it was "based upon" a relevant social commentary - not anyone the author named his characters after. That's the beauty of fiction, or at least one of them. They allow us to confront some issue or scenario safely from the confines of fantasy. It isn't important, in the end, who the characters are or what the author chooses to call them - so long as the narrative provides a vehicle to and from that testing ground.

We know how this story got started along with who started it and why. Did a story teller decide to compose a tale about a messiah to tell in market places for money and people thought the tale was true?

We do, you've cracked the vampire mystery? I wasn't aware. We actually -don't- know why people started telling vampire stories...even though we do know why this particular vampire story was told the way it was.

Which could apply to some failed messiah who became an urban legend.

Or some non-existent messiah as a character in a narrative.

Paul Bunyan is a fictional character who may or may not have been based on folklore. Big John is a song. People don't have grief hallucinations about fictional characters.

Since grief hallucinations are not needed to explain either Paul Bunyon or Jesus - I can;t fathom why it gets mentioned again - except out of your insistence to plug it in. That's the only driving factor I can see here. Nothing even remotely suggest such in either case. Glad you caught Big John, but songs are stories too, and Big John is nothing if not a stereotype or archetype (or propaganda piece) "made flesh" in the telling of the tale.

Wild Bill was a real person who ended up with stories told about him.

Often by him..but always which bear little or no resemblance to him. "Wild Bill" was a construct, based upon "Wild Bill" - NOT, James Butler.

There's all kinds of reasons why the story of Jesus got started. I suggested two of them. I'm interested in hearing other people's suggestions.

There may be all kinds of reasons, sure, and I'm just as interested in hearing them. That won't stop me from pointing out chinks in the armor, so to speak.

[Minimalist]

Well it's not implausible that there was a cult leader around this time about whom the myths arose.

Implausible? No. But it reeks of special pleading since the jesus freaks will deny with their last breath that there is any historical basis for any other gods created by the human imagination.

Humanity has a track record. It creates gods to serve some purpose or other. With the advent of monotheism it now insists each monotheist now insists that his god is the only god.

And they expect rational people to take them seriously.

[Natachan]

Why is it special pleading? As I said, there were many people around this time who made apocoloypic prophesies who had cults spring up around them. This is just the one that got lucky.

[The Grand Nudger]

I have to point out here that these explanations that absolutely insist upon some "jesus" - all amount to absolutely shitting on whomever the author of these tales may be individually or collectively. It's as if I absolutely insisted that there simply must be some real character and event behind Jennifer Government......because cmon, who could have made that shit up whole cloth?

[Minimalist]

Why is it special pleading? As I said, there were many people around this time who made apocoloypic prophesies who had cults spring up around them. This is just the one that got lucky.

Because they will insist that Osiris, Horus, Hathor, Ishtar, Zeus, Odin, Quetzlcoatl, Shiva, Tammuz, etc are just myths.

But their JESUS? Fuck NO! He's the real deal.

Possible. Highly improbable. More likely jesus is simply bullshit like the rest of them.