JESUS <3

[The Valkyrie]

I don't honestly know if a person named Jesus around who the myths arose existed or if he was an amalgam of mythical and historical figures.

I won't claim he didn't exist, but if he did I suspect he was an itinerant rabbi who just happened to cause a stir among the establishment at the time, as so many have done through the centuries.

[KUSA]

Did you know that it is the year 104 in North Korea?

[KevinM1]

My gut tells me that the Jesus of the bible is a combination of regurgitated myths and attributes layered upon one or more local apocalypse prophets who generally made a nuisance out of themselves.

[KevinM1]

Did you know that it is the year 104 in North Korea?

It's truly Best Korea.

[Minimalist]

The current calendar was not immediately adopted by the western world as many believe.

In 1805 the Russians were still using the Julian calendar which differed from the Gregorian calendar in use by the Austrians ( and the French ) by some 12 days.  Whether or not the Russkis could have reached Ulm in any case (Ulm being across Germany on the Danube and in the SW no less) before the French stomped General Mack's Austrian army to bits in October is debatable but the point is they did not get there in time to intervene. As a result the French were able to occupy Vienna and then meet - and crush - the combined Austro/Russian army at Austerlitz.  The calendar problem had nothing whatsoever to do with that.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Worrrrrrd to the heathens!!  

So, do you think Jesus was a real person? I'm not asking if you think Jesus was divine, or if He performed miracles, or if He was crucified, died, and came back.

I'm simply asking if you think there was a man 2000ish years ago named Jesus who brought forth these new "ideas" that we now call Christianity.

We've been over this several times.  No one was named "Jesus" 2000 years ago because the letter "J" didn't exist until around the year 1600.  You call call such a guy just about anything else but he sure as hell wasn't named "Jesus" at that time.  When the writers of the fairy tale blow their own butts out of the water pver such a simple fact as that why would any rationalperson believe anything that they made up about a magical Jewish zombie when the word "Jew" didn't exist until then?

[Foxaèr]

The problem with religion is that it relies too much on the emphasis of what is already popular within the religious community. There never seems to be any room for doubt, because it creates a dissenter that is ostracized.

Religion protects its beliefs at the ultimate price: the loss of love.

[Minimalist]

Cath, are you implying that something divine forced man to reset the year/time?
I don't think you mean that.
This was settled and accomplished after the fact...by humans...

Indeed.  A 6th century monk named Dionysius Exiguus ( Dennis the short.)

I think he got that nickname while showering with thhe boys after a monastery basketball game. 

He also made a couple of serious math errors.  Oh, and he had no idea when "jesus" was born.  I would imagine we could come up with a better system.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I just remember when I was in high school my text book for World History class actually made reference to Jesus as the man who founded Christianity. His name was also one of the key words under "important people to remember" at the end of the chapter. It was a public high school. Does that bother you?

I thought more atheists believed Jesus was a real man, just not who He said He was.

A dummy wrote your history book.  The lunatic Paul founded Christianity, not some character in the First Century with the non-existent name of Jesus.

[Anomalocaris]

Worrrrrrd to the heathens!!  

So, do you think Jesus was a real person? I'm not asking if you think Jesus was divine, or if He performed miracles, or if He was crucified, died, and came back.

I'm simply asking if you think there was a man 2000ish years ago named Jesus who brought forth these new "ideas" that we now call Christianity.

I think there was likely a specific Jesus who was most closely associated with the origin of the myth and cult of Jesus.   Although if we were to be able to trace every twist and turn that the mythification process his image had taken in the hands of his cultists through the ages we would eventually come to the man, very little of what attribute his cultists assign him today would be the remnant of some actual quality of the real man.    Almost all are the result of subsequent mythification, some calculated to advance the interest of Jesus cult against rival cults in the 2nd - 4th centuries, others the result of wish thinking, mass hysteria, delusion, or insanity.   If we were to meet the real man Jesus, I strongly suspect we would find a pitiful, delusional, manipulative, faintly contemptible, most likely deranged individual.  Not image of the divine, but reflection of the underbelly of society.

I don't think he brought forth most of the ideas that Christianity or Christians attribute to him, or chose to think to be what distinguishes their religion from others.   Rather most of the ideas that became subsequently embodied in various orthrodoxies of different Jesus cults were borrowed from various other sources and religions, re-packaged and then attributed to Jesus through subsequent process of mythification in order for the Jesus cultists to better varnish their cult.

I think in this Christianity followed but an orthrodox path for cults to elevate themselves to the status of "faith" or "religion".   Many other cults, vaguely traceable to some particular individual at its origin, gained success through essentially the same path.  Some gained success to rival Christianity itself, such as Islam.   The few actual traits of the real Muhammad we might still vaguely perceive paints him as a scoundrel, thug, opportunist, and psychopathic manipulator. But truth be told, that Muhammad would still be a much more impressive and less pathetic man if met in the flesh than what I think is sketched by what can credibly be perceived as real traits of the actual Jesus.