> Now come on, I don't think he was the "son of god". > However hasn't it been pretty much proven that a dude with > his name was born > about the right time and had a cult following?
My understanding is that the name was pretty common around those parts. Jim Bob the son o' God. :) As to whether or not that has anything to do with the mythological Jesus, I suppose your guess is as good as mine... But there's plenty of evidence that if one of them did have a cult following that ultimately inspired the mythological and subsequent literary Jesus stories, whatever is in the Bible is so far afield as to be completely unrelated to him. In other words, two completely unrelated people -- one a man, the other a literary character. The only similarity between them would be the name and gender. The fact that he's a pretty damned good literary character if you ask me, should be good enough for anyone who wants to follow Christianity as a religion. There's also an added bonus that if you believe he's a literary character, there's no reason to participate in any of the offensive (or evil) behaviors that some Christians have exhibited throughout history such as censorship (evil), murder in the name of "the Lord" (evil) and rabid evangelism (offensive). And yes, I chose the term "rabid" intentionally. :) And no you can't use "Holy Blood Holy Grail" as any kind of evidence, because the author said in interview essentially "I met some schmuck, he told me shit, and I wrote it into the book without verifying it". And you can't of course use the christian bible because we know for a fact that there are multiple translations of the bible wherein two coppies have different text, which disproves the possibility of divine intervention keeping the message straight. As a matter of fact, we have so many different translations that it pretty much proves that there's no reason to believe that anything in the christian bible is of historical significance, much less that there's any relationship between a man named Jesus who lived on earth and the character described in the book. Sure there are things described in the bible that correlate to actual historical events, such as there having been jewish slaves in Egypt. But this relationship is no more akin to history than is the Hunt for Red October in spite of its describing submarines and military artifacts which exist in the real world of present day. As to a real life cult leader, my understanding is that the only artefact of genuine historical significance that might support the idea is the writings of a man named Josephus, who made comment in his writings of a man named Jesus in some distant place, whom he'd never met. Not a compelling argument if you ask me. s. isaac dealey 434.293.6201 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.fusiontap.com http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/author/4806Dealey.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:202792 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
