First, let me say, Happy Birthday, Jesus. (And to Mithras, Horus, Apollonius, Adonis, Tammuz and all the other guys). Nice thread.
Headhunter, if you’re really interested in finding out more about wether Jesus really existed, I’d say: don’t bother searching the internet high and low for scrapes of reliable sources. Rather, contemplate over the question if it’d really matter.
To each his own religion. To everyone his own belief.
That’s what we say in a civilized world. It’s a good thing and certainly a big step forward after countless religious strives and wars (just read the bible on how , for example God preaches from mount Sinai: Thou shall not kill - which doesn’t stop Joshua to eradicate every living being in Jerecho, Mekkeda, Libna, Lachis, Eglon and Ai- clearly pagans were exluded from the law. Again, I don’t mean to offend christianity)
But: It seems people don’t really strive for fundamentally different religions. Human mythology is surprisingly similar around the globe.
The Flood, Giants, Paradise - Practically every culture knows these things.
You could argue that these things really happened.
You could believe loons like VanD?niken that alien travelers interfered with mankind and that this is the reason for countless cultural similarities.
But probably -hopefully?- you will come to the conclusion, that certain ideas are so powerful that they just seem to stick.
Since I was a small boy, I keep hearing that the old times were better. The grass was greener, people were fitter and everybody was happier. It doesn’t matter if it’s today or 5000BC - This meme was ever-present, people like to believe it for various reasons.
So for example, practically every culture tells stories of a glorified past which happens to be part propaganda (so called inflated history), part myth (exile from paradise) and probably part natural resignation (In a book about ancient chinese sex- techniques I read, Huang Di, the mythic emperor learns from a scholar that the ancient chinese people would regularly please their ladies for hours, because they were in tune with nature in those days).
And now comes the myth of the saviour. It is an extremely powerful myth, usually with the same variables. Born in a distant land in a stable or a cave, a noble half-god is born, usually to foster parents and/or the mother is a virgin. Often, he is being persecuted by evil agents. After a relatively peaceful/uneventful childhood, he returns home and becomes the king/messiah. He then prescribes some laws, exterminates demons out of people’s bodies, meets satanic messengers/Death atop on hills.
He then gets betrayed, dies only to be reborn and is worshipped by the people.
It is certainly not an exclusive mesopotamian idea. Even in the amazonian jungle, a small primitive tribe worships till this day a half-godess which, in old times, descended to earth to live among humans, to heal and perform certain other miracles. After her death, which took away the people’s sins, she rose from her deathbed to continue to watch over the beloved tribe from the skies.
one has to realize that monotheism, the first and natural explanation for many natural phenomena, (lightning set our huts ablaze, let’s sacrifice thunder-god a goat; there’s not enough rain this season, here goes another goat, this time to the rain-goddess) has it’s limits. The people yearned for a god who understood them, who lived with them and shared their pain. So, usually the mightiest god send his son to make things right once again between heaven and humanity.
The Jews took this meme from Egypt and modified it according to their needs. Over time, they slowly abandoned their many gods (which you can see in the bible in so far as God is addressed with many different names. Jehova ,Elohim, Adonai, to name a few. Some sources indicate Jehova himself could have originated from a female goddess of fertility)
Jesus wasn’t special at all at that time. But the myth certainly is.
If Constantine would have been a greater fan of Mithras, I assure you, practically nothing would have changed throughout history. We still would have had the slow process of religious unification of ancient and medieval Europe, the crusades, Thomas Aquinas, celibacy (well…probably) and a pope.
And a very similar bible.
Realizing that Jesus is a mythical person doesn’t degrade him, on the contrary. To say it with Dostoevsky’s the Brothers Karamasov : "that the mind of a murderrous, raging and hateful beast like man can come up with this noble idea (of forgiveness and love , e.g. christianity), that is the truly blissful and wonderful essence.
