Friday, January 13, 2006

Did Christ Exist?

This is an interesting (and quite legitimate) question. If you are, at this moment, feeling your blood pressure rise, thinking “this is stupid liberal guff” and getting ready to click away, I would ask you; why?

I have always thought the answer to this question, btw, was yes.

The other question, "Was Christ Divine?", would be more difficult to answer, but I have always thought the answer was "No", in part because I don't believe in divinity but mostly because I have a hard time believing that, even after 2000 years, Christ would let himself go like that.

Personally, so many of the elements of the Christ story resonated with my NDE that I have always believed he was a real, historic figure who had had a transformational experience and shared it with others.

OTOH, there is a lot of evidence that he was a creation, but together out of a blend of other mythological figures. The time between the death of Christ and the first books of the Bible is almost 300 years. Longer than the existence of the United States. Given that we can't consistently interpret the intent of the founders in the Constitution, I tend to doubt an oral tradition handed down over 300 years bears as much factual information as literalists and Catholics would have us believe

A new movie explores this topic. I plan to go see it this weekend and see what they consider to be evidence. So far I've never seen anything persuasive that said he didn't exist, but assuming something exists and looking for proof it doesn't is a logical fallacy.

More after I see the movie and

Thanks for reading this far down! :)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Although I do believe that there is historical proof that the man we know as Jesus existed, the story of a virgin-born savior is not an original Christian notion. I had a religious studies prof who propossed that Christianity was not a monotheistic religion but a polytheistic jewish sect. I guess you can suplant any terminology you want to arrive at your conclusion. The one truth is that most Christians do not know the true origin of their religion and continue to chose not to open their eyes to the church's checkered past. How many ideas are truly original? Right.

Tara

Anonymous said...

Personally I find the historical aspects of biblical stories fascinating - I'd be quite interested to know whatever possible about a historical jesus.

You say: "OTOH, there is a lot of evidence that he was a creation, but together out of a blend of other mythological figures. The time between the death of Christ and the first books of the Bible is almost 300 years."

Got a cite for this? My understanding was that the gospels were written (as in written down, not just "composed") around the year 70. Wikipedia says (I know, I know) that by the first century, oral tradition was no longer considered authoritative.

BTW, glad to hear the good brain news!

/dff

richmanwisco said...

keep up the good work, mark.

MAH said...

I was basing the timeframe on Emperor Constantine and the sort of "firming up" of Christianity. I'd seen a timeline some time back that indicated that most of the books of the bible were complete by then, but you're right, some of them were written before then.

Let me dig out the reference and I'll post it here.

MAH said...

I found the link:
http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

I'm not sure how authoritative it is, but it seems well footnoted.

Anonymous said...

"A different kind of Cowboy", huh? Well, that's not where'd I'd go for my information on when various materials eventually collected in the bible where actually written. ;-)

I think you're conflating the writing of the gospels in the first century with the conversion of the Roman empire in the fifth, so I'm going to dismiss your observation about the framers of the constituion as meaningless. I believe it's the case that there was, at most or perhaps on average, one lifetime between Jesus' life and the writing of the gospels (at least the 4 in the bible - there are others, maybe written earlier, I'm not sure). Not so horrible. Mind you, I don't mention this with the point of addressing Christ's divinity, something I find dubious at best...

Anonymous said...

sorry, meant to sign that. i'll get around to creating an account at some point!

/dff

MAH said...

"I think you're conflating the writing of the gospels in the first century with the conversion of the Roman empire in the fifth"

Thats possible, although there is a lot of evidence that many of the stories are older than Christ.

""A different kind of Cowboy", huh? Well, that's not where'd I'd go for my information on when various materials eventually collected in the bible where actually written. ;-)"

I don't cite him as an expert per se, but as a hub. His references are a little morescholarly.

If you like I'll try to dig up something more acedemic. I'm basing this mostly on some courses in compartitive religion I had in college and, unfortunately, most of my reference material is still in storage in Seattle pending a new house.

I'll try to dig something up you'll be more comfortable with becuae I think the point is valid.


"at most or perhaps on average, one lifetime between Jesus' life and the writing of the gospels (at least the 4 in the bible - there are others, maybe written earlier, I'm not sure)."
Got a reference fr that? I don't want to have to dismiss it as meaningless.