Controversial?...duhhh...

[cid]

Jesus was a mythical character? And he's claiming this in print???
Talk about painting a target on yer shirt...

[SciFiFisher]

Paulkovich writes, "When I consider those 126 writers, all of whom should have heard of Jesus but did not. [...] The silence from [...] Nazareth and Bethlehem, conflicting Bible stories, and so many other mysteries and omissions -- I must conclude that Christ is a mythical character."

Actually, not really all that groundbreaking. It's been making the rounds of historical scholars for a while now that the person we know as Jesus Christ may not have existed per se as a single individual. Part of the rational for this belief is that Roman records from that era make no mention of a "king of the jews" named Jesus Christ.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Tell that to the God Squad

[FZR1KG]

I thought that was common knowledge except in the Christian circles.

[SciFiFisher]

Of course, one of the counter arguments is that most of the records from that era have been destroyed over the years. Especially during the "dark ages". Essentially what the religious scholars argue is that the lack of records doesn't prove that Jesus didn't exist. It merely proves that the barbarians wiped out most of the written histories. For a pretty good example of what they are talking about you can read a book titled "How the Irish Saved Civilization". Seems that while most of Europe was being sacked repeatedly and the books were being burned Ireland had a thriving community of scholars (mostly monks) who preserved a lot of the written works. Even then a lot of what they saved was later destroyed by Vikings.

[Swift]

Paulkovich writes, "When I consider those 126 writers, all of whom should have heard of Jesus but did not. [...] The silence from [...] Nazareth and Bethlehem, conflicting Bible stories, and so many other mysteries and omissions -- I must conclude that Christ is a mythical character."

Actually, not really all that groundbreaking. It's been making the rounds of historical scholars for a while now that the person we know as Jesus Christ may not have existed per se as a single individual. Part of the rational for this belief is that Roman records from that era make no mention of a "king of the jews" named Jesus Christ.

I'm not particularly knowledgable about this, but there was a historian (I saw him on the Daily Show) within the last year or two, that wrote a book about the Historical Jesus. It was obvious he thought he was a real person, but saw him more as a political activist.

[FZR1KG]

Of course, one of the counter arguments is that most of the records from that era have been destroyed over the years. Especially during the "dark ages". Essentially what the religious scholars argue is that the lack of records doesn't prove that Jesus didn't exist. It merely proves that the barbarians wiped out most of the written histories. For a pretty good example of what they are talking about you can read a book titled "How the Irish Saved Civilization". Seems that while most of Europe was being sacked repeatedly and the books were being burned Ireland had a thriving community of scholars (mostly monks) who preserved a lot of the written works. Even then a lot of what they saved was later destroyed by Vikings.

The problem with this is that there are many places that had really good records at the time and are still preserved.
The only logical conclusion, and I have heard this one passed in all seriousness, is that the devil destroyed the documents relating to Jesus to confuse people.

Others (historians) still can't agree on if it's one person, many people, a myth or a combination of them like there was a guy named Jesus who was an activist but he did none of the miracle stuff and that was attributed to him later. Of course we all know this can't be true because people back 2000 years ago were very wise and not easily fooled or prone to spicing up stories that kept getting more spice with each discussion. That's something unique to modern most industrial man because the coal and oil smog altered our bullshit gene and now we're all carriers of it and can't help it.