links gleaned from challenging_god

[novapsyche]

Did Jesus Exist?

Did a historical Jesus exist?

(I'd like to remind my readers that I am a heretic: I believe that Jesus in fact did not exist as a figure in history. However, the Jesus myth, once examined and explicated, offers a way to understanding God, in the way that mere words can. Grand myths, like poetry, get across truths that cannot be expressed any other way.)

Comments

[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

I guess that makes me a heretic too. *shrugs* Ultimately we can't really know if a physical person name dJesus existed. But even the myth, if myth it is, has had such an impact that it hardly matters.

[mr-quackenbush.livejournal.com]

I was at one time an adherent of the thesis that there is no historical jesus. I have long since come to the conclusion that there is no way to establish it one way or another. There is simply no way of sorting it out as there is no primary source information about him. I do find that the gospel of thomas, the q-document hypothesis, and the various "miracle sequence" hypotheses, which were written within living memory of when the events are alleged to have taken place, seem to indicate that there was someone who did some of these things which were later blown into the Jesus-Myth. Although whether he seems to me to have been more a jewish Cynic than a rabbi.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

I am of the belief that Jesus was an ancient Paul Bunyan-- just some guy off the street to whom was ascribed mythical powers for no apparent reason. Not a teacher, not an influential human being in any way... just John (or Jesus) Q. Public.

[padpedpladuk.livejournal.com]

I suspect the story got a big boost from the fact that the name Jesus in Mediterranean languages sounds a lot like the pre-existing word for "the big guy" - Zeus, or Deus.