Posted: Jun 22, 2019 7:17 pm
Owdhat wrote:Cito di Pense wrote:Owdhat wrote:Svartalf wrote:I don't believe in miracles either... which is why I wonder about the historical Jesus' status as a religious leader, either he was a master manipulator who arranged for fakery, or he was one big nothing who likely made a scandal in the temple by attacking the merchants there, and was arrested and executed as a seditious element.
Well, we all agree someone wrote the gospels and they mostly date from at least the second to first century and they all have common elements written by independent sources.
Yeah, but the independent sources are anonymous and don't have any sources of their own other than religious literature. There's nothing compelling in citing these as independent sources. If people studying this shit had more on the ball, they'd be more careful about how they toss around the concept of sources. So the strength of the Gospels as historical sources is limited and whenever that fact has to be confronted, the chatter ceases to be about the Gospels. Fictions are more easily copied than documents with, um, sources.
You want so many sauces you'd ruin a good meal.
The fact remains that somebody at sometime thought this shit was worth writing down. And so did another person. And that's quite a lot for a nondescript area of nothing much. Who cares if somebody else got hold of it and ran with the tale - not me.
Well, there are people who understand how to read ancient literature in ancient languages that seem closer to the er, source, to try to find out something about ancient cultures and peoples, using the techniques accepted and used by academic ancient historians. And then there are the people who were forced to read a lot of bible stories as kids and as adults are trying to make all that seem like not quite such a colossal waste of time. So they read popular books by popular authors who re-interpret the bible stories for them. Give some thought to which category you really want to plump for.