Dear Johan (OUG),

I'm glad that you've read, "Jesus The Man."
I've also read Richard Dawkins, "The God
Delusion," and many other works. I find that neither
book really affected my faith or my personal
beliefs. However, it does help put things into
perspective for me. How else will we learn?

OUG, There is little historical evidence for the existence of Jesus at all. Other than the 4 'acceptable' gospels there's not much else around. If he did exist at all and that is a big if, his birth would be as much a mystery as is most of his life. It was not uncommon for early writers of Christianity to attribute what they wrote to an early saint example "According to Peter etc etc...." This attributing lent weight to what they had to say. Over the centuries Christians have fashioned the Jesus story to suit their own particular machinations. The better the story sounded the more likely it was to be accepted as fact. Writers would add a good bit of embellishment to make the story go down well with the majority. By the year 2011 its become impossible to separate fact from fiction with anything to do with the life of Christ.

The existence of the Historical Jesus is a moot question where serious historians are concerned. There are certain crackpots like Robert Price (and a couple of others here and there) who make laughably poor attempts at arguing that the entire idea of Jesus was made up, but those arguments aren't really even considered by mainstream scholars. The reason they aren't considered is because those arguments rely on 1. Massive distortions and implausible interpretations of the historical evidence we do have for Jesus, plus 2. Improbable inferences based on stretched similarities with other ancient figures.

If you're interested in knowing why historians don't take the idea seriously in more detail, spend half an hour reading this 4 part series:

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Is-Jesus-Christ-a-Myth-Part-One-James-Hannam.html

Or if you want to spend more time, and get a range of views (including the aforementioned Robert Price), check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Historical-Jesus-Five-Views/dp/0830838686/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324991362&sr=8-1

The real question isn't whether Jesus existed, but whether his claims to divinity are true. This is ultimately a spiritual and philosophical issue. However, we do have historical pointers which are suggestive of him being more than a mere man.

Oh, I definitely agree with this, Trav...

<<The real question isn't whether Jesus existed, but whether his claims to divinity are true.>>

But notice, though, that we never really question whether or not Horus or Mithra or any of the other Jesus parallels actually existed?

You don't think there may be some cultural bias there?

I've always been curious about that. Kind of like how those who hit rock bottom in life, and thus manage to "find God", funnily enough end-up finding that that God just happened to be the God that was predominant in their culture.

<<This is ultimately a spiritual and philosophical issue.>>

Okay then, if you can define “spiritual” and how it is a philosophical issue, we can go from there. But until then, your claim is meaningless.

<<However, we do have historical pointers which are suggestive of him being more than a mere man.>>

Such as?

AJ, considering my past experience of having these sorts of discussions with you, I foresee this as being a counterproductive exercise.

(I elaborated on my reasons for thinking this, in my post dated 26/10/11 http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12760&page=0#220691).

But wholly apart from my thoughts on our past duelling, AJ, I just think that the internet is not a productive medium for massdebates. Hence, I will leave my contribution at one comment.

Hope you are having a great Christmas season

Christians like to attribute so much as being the 'word of Jesus'. I say there is no evidence that anything contained in the 4 accepted Gospels is in any way the 'word of Jesus'. Even Christian will agree that none of the Gospels are a first hand account of the life of Jesus. If tested in a court of law the gospel evidence would be thrown out as unacceptable 'hear-say'.