"Jeckyl" <noone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said :
> So the evidence you claim for Jesus existing is stories that were
> written (at best) many decades (if not centuries) afterward his
> supposed death by those with an obvious agenda to promote such stories
> as true.
Personally, I have no problem with the idea of Jesus existing
historically as a man. That doesn't stretch credulity or bend any known
physical laws. And as we know from the likes of Elvis, or Diana,
Princess of Wales, people can become popular legends very quickly indeed.
What we're told about Jesus even a few decades after the fact might bear
no resemblance at all to the man himself or what he might actually have
said and done.
I have more of a problem with the idea that a historical Jesus - if
indeed there was one - would have turned water into wine, or raised the
dead, because that goes against our current understanding of the way the
world works. In order for me to accept that, there's got to be evidence
- and more than one source (even a collection of associated sources)
saying that he did it. Which isn't to say that there mightn't be some
*symbolic* significance in these stories of miracles. The modern mind
has trouble dealing with the idea of 'truth' being anything other than
absolute, literal, it-happened-just-like-it-says truth. If it isn't that
kind of truth, then to our minds it's an evil lie, obviously intended to
deceive. It's that mentality that brings us Creation literalists: they
can't accommodate the notion that a story can have mythological merit
without necessarily being a historical account of what happened. But
ancient societies could handle mythology and legend far more gracefully
and rationally than we seem to.
The problem with devoting all your attention to ru****ng at the preferred
conclusion is that it sometimes leads to baby-and-bathwater situations:
many of those keen to disprove Christianity have decided that *any*
possibility of a historical Jesus must be denied in order to do so. It
needn't. If it's your goal to undermine the strict tenets of historical
Christianity then all that's required is to show that there's no evidence
that he was anything other than a man.
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