a comment I made in quility's journal

[novapsyche]

It's my contention that a myth should not be misinterpreted as history. The Bible exists, and the Old Testament was written about people who existed in Jewish history. But the evidence that Yeshua existed is shaky at best. The four gospels were not written at the time of Yeshua's supposed existence; the authorship of them is even in dispute. Then there's the whole political process as to which books were considered gospel in the first place.

The dying and resurrected man is a powerful recurring image in mythologies ancient and modern. The ghost of that idea remains in the Christian rite of baptism, but the symbolic meaning seems to have been forgotten or not effectively transmitted through the ages. The Gnostic in me says that the resurrection occurs in this life; death must be resolved in this life. Baptism isn't just recognizing that Jesus is one's Savior (as a lot of Protestant churches emphasize). To be baptized is to understand death as an illusion; repentance at that understanding occurs (known in the Greek as metanoia), and it is at that point that one becomes a Christian, or Christlike.