King Arthur & historicity of fictional people

[Fake Messiah]

Professor Dorsey Armstrong is a very smart person but it's hard not to see that she is being ridiculous on how she reasons real King Arthur actually existed, you can listen to her



She says that she believes that King Arthur was a real person but he wasn't called Arthur, he certainly wasn't a king, he didn't live in Camelot and Avalon around round table, he didn't have a shiny armor, he didn't have twelve knights and Merlin (to which she says were all made up) I mean what kind of an oxymoron is that? She even says that most historians consider King Arthur to be just a fantasy.

So by her logic you can make any fictional person could have existed, like Conan The Barbarian: he was based on Hercules and did Hercules really exist? Well, he did, but he wasn't called Hercules and he was not son of a god and he did not have superhuman strength and he did non meet Atlas and held heavens, he certainly did not kill Hydra, but rather there was some guy in ancient Greece who was very strong and brave. So some guy existed on which Hercules was based on and then Conan was based on Hercules and ditto Conan The Barbarian existed.

I mean one thing is when you have some legends around real people like Lincoln and his cherry tree, but the other is when somebody is completely made up.

[The Grand Nudger]

 a real person but he wasn't called Arthur, he certainly wasn't a king, he didn't live in Camelot and Avalon around round table, he didn't have a shiny armor, he didn't have twelve knights and Merlin 

........and this reminds me rather of our lord jesus. 

The strength of these pseudo-historical or legendary characters.....culturally and narratively, all of them, is how many analogs can be projected onto them. They are everymen. One simply adds up known historical referents until one has what they feel to be a full bodied spring of source material, and then assumes that the authors of the character had those people in mind.

[CapnAwesome]

If you strip King Arthur of all those things? Is he really King Arthur or just some dude? Same with Jesus.

[The Grand Nudger]

The idea..is that these characters can be based upon some historical figure that personifies the age.  A legendary hero-as-zeitgeist hardly requires the man, however.

[Minimalist]

You don't have to go back that far for examples of people believing utter bullshit.

In Chapter 6 of "On The Historicity of Jesus" Richard Carrier writes:

In 1945 Betty Crocker was rated in a national survey as the second most admired woman in America, and to this day a street is named after her in Golden Valley, Minnesota, where she still lives. Her father was William Crocker, a successful corporate executive in the food industry, and she started her career answering letters on cooking questions for her father's company, then acquired her own national radio show where she delivered cooking advice for twenty-four years. Later she had her own television show, while making appearances on other TV shows and in TV commercials to promote her products. I've seen actual video tapes of her cooking and speaking, and her picture still adorns various General Mills baking products. She has also published several cookbooks, and now has her own Website. All that is 100 percent true. And yet she doesn't exist. She was never born, never lived, never spoke, never appeared on TV, and never wrote a word. Others simply wrote or appeared in her name. Welcome to the world of the mythical corporate mascot.

I'm equally sure that there are morons who think that Ronald McDonald is a real clown, too!

[Shell B]

I don't think he was real, but I do enjoy Bernard Cornwell's "historical" fictions regarding Arthur. More entertaining than the original tale.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Reminds me of a professor I had in classical history who told the class - in all seriousness - that The Iliad wasn't written by Homer, but by another Greek of the same name.

Boru

[Minimalist]

William Tell:  Bullshit too.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/i...l-2198511/

There is just one small problem: many historians doubt that Tell ever made those two famous arrow shots in 1307, and many are convinced that no such person as William Tell ever existed.
For one thing, his story wasn’t set down fully until 1569- 70, some 250 years after the events it describes, by historian Aegidius Tschudi, who, among other things, got his dates wrong.

Also in the mid-18th century, a Bernese scholar named Gottlieb de Haller read, in an old history of Denmark, a tale involving King Harald Bluetooth, who reigned from 936 to 987, and a Viking chieftain named Toko. One drunken evening Toko boasted that he could do anything with his bow and arrow; he could even shoot an apple off a pike at the other end of the hall. “Good,” said the king. “I will now place an apple on the head of your little son and you will shoot it off.” There was no arguing with a king, so Toko took up his weapon, told the boy to look the other way and shot off the apple. When the king inquired why he had two more arrows inside his vest, Toko replied, “To kill you, sire, had I killed my son.”

People love bullshit.

[Shell B]

Bullshit is more entertaining than human shit.

[Minimalist]

Bullshit is more entertaining than human shit.

Indeed it is, my dear.  Hence, "jesus."