i wrote a long reply to thisbut fuck it. arguing about things on the internet is like drinking your own piss - pointless and pretty unpleasant. it's even sillier when you're doing it on a comedy website...
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boris the spider,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:48,
archived)
there's always gaz if you're bothered.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 17:50,
archived)
at some point maybeat the minute i'm probably a bit too irritated (not at you, at life) to have a sensible argument, it would probably just descend into petty abuse from my side...
i think if we actually got down to the base of it we'd not find too much difference between our approaches, except that i view the lack of evidence as no reason to assume someone is anything more than legend, while you view it as no reason to say he didn't exist when its more than plausible that someone called "jesus" was walking around jerusalem preaching. which it certainly is. i'd just argue that if that person existed (and while there's no reason to assume he did but given that jesus was a common name it seems a reasonable assumption) there's no reason to tag him with "the original jesus".
the comparison i've made before is to king arthur. i can think of three people off the top of my head who can be held up as "the original arthur": ambrosious aurelianus, riothamus and owain ddantgwyn. ambrosius certainly existed, riothamus was probably a title for a king of brittany (but he may have been actually british), while ddantgwyn is the only one we have even a vague reason to assume was called "arthur". (and that reasoning is a bit specious). the point? aspects of the stories of these three, if the identification with ddantgwyn can be trusted, can be found in the arthur myth and there *was* no arthur.
it happens with all legends, and jesus is a legend. his story was passed through word-of-mouth and sayings gospels for decades before being written, and then it was passed around, rewritten, recast, cleaned up, messed up, and then finally emerged in the second century with the four gospels we know and a bunch of other miscellaneous texts. that's a long time to layer (even unintentional) misinformation all over it.
sure, there may have been a wandering religious nutjob called jesus, but identifying him with "jesus" is actually a bit of a stretch since things will be attributed to him that he never did, never said, some of them pure invention and some of them incorporated from other wandering preachers... including those from well outside judea. gnosticism shows a fair influence from further east, and we know there was plenty of contact. with that contact come ideas and myths.
your argument could equally be used to suggest that yahweh was real. maybe there even was a "king" called yahweh sometime 4,000 years ago or more, but it seems unlikely. what was passed onto us appears to be the result of the rather hamfisted synthesis of two or three traditions spread across the land we later knew as israel. stories from further back were incorporated (the most famous being the flood, which bears too striking a resemblance to that in the epic of gilgamesh to be coincidental), fables were misinterpreted as fact, morality tales as genuine history, and there was almost certainly pure propaganda thrown into the mix. the old testament is a great way to instill a feeling of nationalism and pride into the remains of two or three very distinct nations - just tell them that back 500 years there was a united kingdom. there may have been - there was certainly a powerful nation centred around jerusalem at roughly that time for whatever that means - but trying to claim that at that point all that later became israel was united and together is an enormous stretch. it's believing your sources to the point of credulity. given the layering and manipulation of stories all through the old testament -- something that is very widely accepted -- i see no reason to *not* apply the same thinking to the new testament...
that's my position, anyway, all without any abuse :)
(i think if we actually got down to the base of it we'd not find too much difference between our approaches, except that i view the lack of evidence as no reason to assume someone is anything more than legend, while you view it as no reason to say he didn't exist when its more than plausible that someone called "jesus" was walking around jerusalem preaching. which it certainly is. i'd just argue that if that person existed (and while there's no reason to assume he did but given that jesus was a common name it seems a reasonable assumption) there's no reason to tag him with "the original jesus".
the comparison i've made before is to king arthur. i can think of three people off the top of my head who can be held up as "the original arthur": ambrosious aurelianus, riothamus and owain ddantgwyn. ambrosius certainly existed, riothamus was probably a title for a king of brittany (but he may have been actually british), while ddantgwyn is the only one we have even a vague reason to assume was called "arthur". (and that reasoning is a bit specious). the point? aspects of the stories of these three, if the identification with ddantgwyn can be trusted, can be found in the arthur myth and there *was* no arthur.
it happens with all legends, and jesus is a legend. his story was passed through word-of-mouth and sayings gospels for decades before being written, and then it was passed around, rewritten, recast, cleaned up, messed up, and then finally emerged in the second century with the four gospels we know and a bunch of other miscellaneous texts. that's a long time to layer (even unintentional) misinformation all over it.
sure, there may have been a wandering religious nutjob called jesus, but identifying him with "jesus" is actually a bit of a stretch since things will be attributed to him that he never did, never said, some of them pure invention and some of them incorporated from other wandering preachers... including those from well outside judea. gnosticism shows a fair influence from further east, and we know there was plenty of contact. with that contact come ideas and myths.
your argument could equally be used to suggest that yahweh was real. maybe there even was a "king" called yahweh sometime 4,000 years ago or more, but it seems unlikely. what was passed onto us appears to be the result of the rather hamfisted synthesis of two or three traditions spread across the land we later knew as israel. stories from further back were incorporated (the most famous being the flood, which bears too striking a resemblance to that in the epic of gilgamesh to be coincidental), fables were misinterpreted as fact, morality tales as genuine history, and there was almost certainly pure propaganda thrown into the mix. the old testament is a great way to instill a feeling of nationalism and pride into the remains of two or three very distinct nations - just tell them that back 500 years there was a united kingdom. there may have been - there was certainly a powerful nation centred around jerusalem at roughly that time for whatever that means - but trying to claim that at that point all that later became israel was united and together is an enormous stretch. it's believing your sources to the point of credulity. given the layering and manipulation of stories all through the old testament -- something that is very widely accepted -- i see no reason to *not* apply the same thinking to the new testament...
that's my position, anyway, all without any abuse :)
boris the spider,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 18:05,
archived)
I don't know that the analogy with Arthurian legend is really very good,the old testament is a massively complex work though, but don't get me started on Yahweh or we'll be up all night.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 18:23,
archived)
it's a reasonable analogyin that they're both legends - and people did genuinely believe in arthur and believe that he would return. but i'm using it basically just as an example of how stories and legends from multiple people can be layered onto one character, who may or may not have originally been real, and then stirred around until essentially nothing's left of the man who donated his name.
whether that did happen with jesus or not is a different question, but it seems perfectly plausible to me.
anyway, i wrote a lot of stuff just above when i said i wouldn't - i think i'll let the board recover :)
(whether that did happen with jesus or not is a different question, but it seems perfectly plausible to me.
anyway, i wrote a lot of stuff just above when i said i wouldn't - i think i'll let the board recover :)
boris the spider,
Mon 17 Oct 2011, 19:46,
archived)