"Where do you get this stuff? Nobody claims or claimed Zeus was a real person"
You just don't grasp any of it, do you?
There were thousands of Gods. Did “Believers” believe they were “real”? Of course they did. Is there any universal objective agreement that any of these amazing and imagined Creators were/are real? Well, of course there is not.
The Greeks believed in many Gods and occupied much of their time in honoring them at shrines built in their honor. Indeed they sentenced one of the world’s greatest men to death for even questioning their reality and for disrespecting their reality and authority..
The Hebrews believed in a Storm God similar to Zeus—a pompous God with maniacal self absorption, a lack of rational balance, and a psychopathic indifference to pain and suffering.
And there are thousands of others which have historical “claims”…but no historical EVIDENCE that would support their authenticity other than in the skewed judgment of the various “believers” from the opposing (and often warring) factions.
Is there anything like a rational and educated consensus for the authenticity of any of these “Gods”? Of course not. No Christian believes that Allah is real. Allah has very particular prejudices. No Muslim thinks that Yahweh is real. Yahweh has very particular prejudices. Buddhists, Hindus, and other religious persuasions around the world accord Jesus no more historical authenticity as a miracle worker than they do Dionysus or Thor; nor do they consider Jesus (the Bible Man) as more or less mythological than other such countless stories which incorporate primitive superstitions and pre-scientific naivety.
It is impossible, as well, to avoid the observation that they all share common imagination, myth, and metaphor…and create Gods with the character of primitive humans—only with the power to impose and to do the impossible. The Christian movement was merely a twist on one of many Judaic sects mixed with elements of Zoroaster, Mithra, etc. When one strips away the centuries of Catholic “research” and “scholarship”, one finds merely primitive superstition (or “historical claims” as you so like to put it).
Let the scales fall from your eyes. See clearly for the first time. They had no answers for their many questions: only spirits, demons, and Gods. Any cheap magician was a God or, at least, His representative. Mental illness was either evil spirits or God infusion. To exalt in these ancient brutalities and absurdities is to demean your humanity and to denounce your mind.
"The question is whether Jesus is a historical figure. You ignorantly deny this"
Stepping around your gratuitous insult...I have answered the question over and over: The evidence shows there was no historical Jesus as depicted in the bible.
"Take the plunge, a course on basic logic would be of great benefit and you could probably get a senior discount to boot"
I can only smile at you...:-) |
