Pat Condell: "Hello angry Christians"

[Lord Poe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atTSwau9fwM

I love people who beat others over the head mercilessly with their own hypocrisy!

[Soontir C'boath]

Thanks to you, I spent at least an hour responding to replies on Youtube... It is refreshing though since I never do that here.

[Patrick Degan]

His response to Osama binLaden is even funnier.

[Rye]

The ahistorical Jesus bit is a bit annoying, just a rehash of oft-refuted claims that are nevertheless passed around "freethinker" websites, but as usual, he's pretty funny and has a good speaking voice and makes good points.

[Ariphaos]

The ahistorical Jesus bit is a bit annoying, just a rehash of oft-refuted claims that are nevertheless passed around "freethinker" websites, but as usual, he's pretty funny and has a good speaking voice and makes good points.

Really?

Name a contemporary source for Jesus then.

[Lord Poe]

Dinesh D'Souza Responds to Pat Condell

Why Is This Atheist So Smug?

I really enjoyed watching the video below of a British atheist named Pat Condell. Supposedly addressed to "angry Christians," the video is actually more illuminating about atheists. Condell is ostensibly chastizing Christians for burning with inward rage and for secretly wanting people to burn in hell. Actually, I don't know a single Christian who fits this description, although perhaps there are some.

What is obvious for all to see is what a smug, self-satisfied character Condell is. On his website he boasts, "Hi, I'm Pat Condell. I don't respect your beliefs and I don't care if you're offended." Religion has its uses, he concedes. "I turn to it whenever I want my intelligence insulted." Ordinarily I wouldn't pay much attention to this guy, but in a strange way I think his attitude mirrors that of the big-name atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. If the televangelists are guilty of producing some simple-minded, self-righteous Christians, then the atheist authors are guilty of producing self-congratulatory buffoons like Condell.

Only Condell doesn't know he is a buffoon. He regards himself as super-sophisticated, a man of knowledge. Yet consider his argument in the video that Christ probably didn't exist. Condell says Christ's historicity is based on "hearsay." But all historical evidence is "hearsay," including the evidence for the existence of Voltaire and George Washington. In reality there is more evidence for Christ's existence than there is for the existence of most of the figures of the ancient world. Do you believe that Socrates existed? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? Think about this: we only know about Socrates because of Plato and Xenophon, and there are only a couple of sources for Alexander and Caesar. The documentary evidence for these men is limited to very few manuscripts which are sometimes dated centuries later. Yet no historian doubts that these men existed.

By contrast, Christ's existence is attested not only by the writers of the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, who wrote in the first hundred years after Christ's death, but also because of Jewish, Greek and Roman sources, such as Josephus, Suetonius, Pliny, and Tacitus. There are innumerable early manuscripts of the gospels and they have been assiduously compared to establish their authenticity. The early church and its martyrs who risked death rather than renounce Christ all suggest that there was a man behind it all, a man who was crucified and who was believed by his disciples to have risen. Whatever you think of the miracles, no serious historian questions the historicity of Christ.
Next month my book What's So Great About Christianity hits the shelves, and atheists are going to find that they no longer have the public field to themselves. In fact, I'm scheduled to debate Christopher Hitchens in New York city October 22. So far Hitchens has been foraging around around the country beating up pastors who are unaccustomed to dealing with spear-chuckers like him. Mine is a book that will empower believers and challenge unbelievers. It meets skepticism and atheism on its own intellectual ground, which is the ground of reason and evidence. Michael Shermer, editor of "Skeptic" magazine, says of my book, "It takes the debate to a new level. Read it." And here is my old debating rival Stanley Fish, a noted sch olar who hardly shares either my theology or my politics: "The great merit of this book is that it concedes nothing. Rather than engaging in the usual defensive ploys, D'Souza meets every anti-God argument head on and defeats it on its own terms. Infinitely more sophisticated than the rants produced by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, What's So Great About Christianity leaves those atheist books in the dust." If you are ready for the challenge, preorder the book here.

Condell's video is currently on the front page of the "Most Discussed" list on Youtube. I hope he resdponds to this idiot.

[Feil]

Piggybacking the popularity of a Youtube star to advertise his book, eh? That's so slippery and evil it's actually kind of endearing in a slippery, evil sort of way.

[Darth Wong]

It would be nice if people understood that an "historian" in that era was nothing at all like an historian today. The idea of fastidious attention to factual accuracy was unheard-of back then. Exaggeration melded with fact which in turn melded with fiction. And did you ever notice how many of the battles in ancient literature involve armies of a million men? Thermopylae, Gaugemela, even one of the battles in the Old Testament. That's because historians back then just threw out the number "a million" whenever they wanted to give an impression that the enemy army was vast. Does that sound like people who were particularly concerned about factual accuracy? Rumour, innuendo, or outright fabrication were par for the course back then, and if enough people said something happened, then gosh darn it, it really happened and historians would write about it accordingly.

We're talking about an era when less than 1% of the population could read anyway, for fuck's sake. Does anyone in his right mind think that "historians" in this era were concerned about getting keel-hauled in the court of public opinion because some competing scholar pointed out inconsistencies in his work?

One of the "historians" who "documented" Jesus also "documented" Augustus Caesar rising into the heavens upon his death. I suppose we should take that as history too? An ancient "historian" was more like what we today would call a modern "blogger". Lots of talk, but no real evidence that he is either honest, accurate, or even competent. That's why the only reason we're pretty sure about figures like Alexander is the fact that their existence was documented by so many people from so many different cultures. Saying "Aha, there were a half-dozen people in Rome who wrote about Jesus" doesn't mean shit.

[Surlethe]

... and if enough people said something happened, then gosh darn it, it really happened and historians would write about it accordingly.

This is the crux of it, I think. The ancient cultures were all almost entirely oral cultures, where literally 99.9% of all information was transmitted via word-of-mouth. The Homeric epics, the Bible -- pretty much everything was written down after generations of being told as stories. The ancient idea of truth still had a millennium and a half of evolution before it neared the modern idea of correspondence to reality.

In fact, we can see glimpses of that ancient feeling of truth even today: how many Americans will say, off the cuff, that America is the greatest country in the world, the last bastion of freedom, etc., etc., only to admit when pressed that those aren't really the truth. Americans treat their image of their country as truth until shown otherwise, and even then secretly hold onto it. We have this sort of ambient zeitgeist of vague impressions that are difficult to pin down, but which nevertheless we believe in anyway. It's the antithesis of precise research-based beliefs.

This sort of thing is exactly what the historians of the time were documenting, not what actually happened.

One of the "historians" who "documented" Jesus also "documented" Augustus Caesar rising into the heavens upon his death.

Do you have a source for this, including the historian? Earlier, I had assumed you were talking about Josephus, but when I got a chance to look up "Augustus" in a volume of his, I saw nothing of the sort, so I figure it was someone else.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Dinesh D'Souza is the lowest form of self-serving, prolefeed-producing conservative shills that exist. His purpose on Earth is solely to self-aggrandize by appealing and feeding the worst instincts of the most ignorant political branch in contemporary America. He actually thinks we should concede to Islamic rage over our liberal and pluralistic society. Of course I'm sure that'll make them stop caring about our support for unpopular local regimes and constant involvement in their internal affairs for decades.

Notice his "response" has just about one real argument: Jesus is just as real as other legends! Waaahhh! The rest are false analogies between a group who stir up support domestic terrorism (when was the last time a Dawkins' book was popular with people who blow up churches?) and atheists. Like that asshole Randolph who just happened to be able to hide amongst the Deep South cretins that sustain mouthbreathers from Falwell to D'Souza. And about 50% shameless plugging for his latest brain-dead screed.

[Rye]

The ahistorical Jesus bit is a bit annoying, just a rehash of oft-refuted claims that are nevertheless passed around "freethinker" websites, but as usual, he's pretty funny and has a good speaking voice and makes good points.

Really?

Name a contemporary source for Jesus then.

How many contemporary sources were there for any minor characters in early 1st century Judea, and why would you expect people to remark upon Jesus? Perhaps you could name some of these sources that were contemporary to Jesus and would've remarked upon him, but didn't?

That's why the only reason we're pretty sure about figures like Alexander is the fact that their existence was documented by so many people from so many different cultures. Saying "Aha, there were a half-dozen people in Rome who wrote about Jesus" doesn't mean shit.

While I agree with that response in regards to that weed, D'Souza, I think you're being a bit harsh here. What's the best explanation for jews and christians independently remarking not only upon some guy called Jesus as an average miracle worker and source of the christian cult, but his brother James and his relation to the temple? What's the best explanation for the Bible recording Jesus saying and doing stuff that doesn't fit with messianic prophecy, first century judaism or christianity, including one of the most obvious problems with a living messiah who's half way through completing prophecy, in that he ended up getting killed horribly by the authorities!

The "embarassment criteria" for assessing historicity would likely be ignored by D'Souza, since his agenda is more "the stupid bullshit of christianity is true" rather than "Jesus was likely a historical basis for some of the stuff in the gospels, Paul's letters and first century christianity."

Also, you've got to love/loathe the cashing in on TGD and god is not Great popularity. Oh, he attacks these arguments head on without the same apologist recourse and standard arguments, does he? I will happily bet £10 that that claim is total bullshit and he does just repeat the standard arguments that have actually been dealt with. It makes me sick just thinking about it.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

The accuracy of historians and their goals also depends on the particular historians from the period you are talking about. There were quite a few who made shit up and had "story-telling" as the primary focus, but some are classified as pretty accurate. These tend to be the ones who set out with an argumentative form of history and specifically set up the goal of being as accurate as possible.

Thucydides and Polybius, although not always accurate, are two examples of this mentality as compared to Livy and the earlier Greek author of the Persian Wars.

They tended to embellish the work and invent speeches, as was customary for the time.

[Ariphaos]

How many contemporary sources were there for any minor characters in early 1st century Judea, and why would you expect people to remark upon Jesus? Perhaps you could name some of these sources that were contemporary to Jesus and would've remarked upon him, but didn't?

Minor? What cute backpedaling. I didn't ask my question to be answered by another question, I asked my question to be answered.

There is at least a possibly contemporary inscription of "Pontius Pilatus". For someone who people claim raised the dead, cured leprosy and the blind, and fed five thousand people, I feel justified in expecting -something-.

[Rye]

How many contemporary sources were there for any minor characters in early 1st century Judea, and why would you expect people to remark upon Jesus? Perhaps you could name some of these sources that were contemporary to Jesus and would've remarked upon him, but didn't?

Minor? What cute backpedaling.

Where did I backpedal, munchkin?

I didn't ask my question to be answered by another question, I asked my question to be answered.

There isn't any contemporary evidence for him. This is not out of place in that time period. The only way your argument from silence would be useful would be if you were to expect there to be such contemporary evidence. By example, I take it from your lack of examples that you don't actually know of anyone who would've remarked upon a rabble rouser in Judea at the time he was purported to be alive. That is a proper argument from silence; you are silent about historical sources from the time of Jesus that ought to have remarked on him, therefore it's likely you don't know of any such historical sources either through your own ignorance of the subject or because there were none, or both.

There is at least a possibly contemporary inscription of "Pontius Pilatus".

Hooray? Why should I value contemporary evidence in antiquity again? I believe Appollonius of Tyana existed, and Simon Magus too, and I'm unaware of genuine first hand contemporary evidence for their existences. Do you think these people were invented?

For someone who people claim raised the dead, cured leprosy and the blind, and fed five thousand people, I feel justified in expecting -something-.

That's first century mythologising, duh. We don't have contemporary evidence for Tom Frum, the american GI that has his own messianic cult in the south pacific, which started about 50 or 60 years ago. No doubt he has similar myths about him by now, it would be remiss of us to conclude that there's no historical basis for the Tom Frum cult (obviously, it was american GIs in WW2).

[Ariphaos]

The ahistorical Jesus bit is a bit annoying, just a rehash of oft-refuted claims [snip]

You made the claim that it's oft-refuted. I'd like to see a refutation. A contemporary source would be the only worthwhile thing that comes to mind.

So provide a refutation then.

There isn't any contemporary evidence for him. This is not out of place in that time period. The only way your argument from silence would be useful would be if you were to expect there to be such contemporary evidence. By example, I take it from your lack of examples that you don't actually know of anyone who would've remarked upon a rabble rouser in Judea at the time he was purported to be alive. That is a proper argument from silence; you are silent about historical sources from the time of Jesus that ought to have remarked on him, therefore it's likely you don't know of any such historical sources either through your own ignorance of the subject or because there were none, or both.

I'm not, but the closest thing to a refutation posted so far is comparing Jesus to figures like Julius Ceasar and Washington.

I am, however, familiar with the merger of Godman myths during the period, and that the name Jesus seems to have won out. There certainly were people named Jesus -during- that period, but the closest two 'sources', both debatable, names one Christus (Tacitus), and the other 'Jesus brother of James ... son of Damneus" (Josephus).

That is, someone named Jesus may have existed (was known about), and someone named Christ may have existed (was known about), if we take these two passages to be authentic. Whether they were the same person then becomes highly debatable.

That's first century mythologising, duh. We don't have contemporary evidence for Tom Frum, the american GI that has his own messianic cult in the south pacific, which started about 50 or 60 years ago. No doubt he has similar myths about him by now, it would be remiss of us to conclude that there's no historical basis for the Tom Frum cult (obviously, it was american GIs in WW2).

The historical basis for what became Jesus dates back to a multitude of separate origins that eventually merged to form Christianity, three centuries before his supposed birth. Very little is mentioned in the Gospels that was not a saying or belief elsewhere.

---

So no. I don't see any evidence that a person contemporarily known as 'Jesus Christ' ever existed. It seems far more likely to me that they were two separate people that absorbed a lot of previous godman ideologies, a fair bit of Judaism, and then got merged.

[Lord Poe]

The historical basis for what became Jesus dates back to a multitude of separate origins that eventually merged to form Christianity, three centuries before his supposed birth. Very little is mentioned in the Gospels that was not a saying or belief elsewhere.

Here's a video that speaks about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aW2N46vf4Q

[Darth Wong]

That's why the only reason we're pretty sure about figures like Alexander is the fact that their existence was documented by so many people from so many different cultures. Saying "Aha, there were a half-dozen people in Rome who wrote about Jesus" doesn't mean shit.

While I agree with that response in regards to that weed, D'Souza, I think you're being a bit harsh here. What's the best explanation for jews and christians independently remarking not only upon some guy called Jesus as an average miracle worker and source of the christian cult, but his brother James and his relation to the temple?

Two possibilities:

1) A lot of people were spreading an incredibly distorted mixture of mythology and rumour, and some historians wrote their oral stories down as facts because that's simply how historians conducted themselves back then.

2) There really was a guy named Jesus who just happened to have a life story that was coincidentally identical to an amalgam of many local religious beliefs.

What's the best explanation for the Bible recording Jesus saying and doing stuff that doesn't fit with messianic prophecy, first century judaism or christianity, including one of the most obvious problems with a living messiah who's half way through completing prophecy, in that he ended up getting killed horribly by the authorities!

So your argument is that since the Jesus story wasn't a perfect match for one of the mythologies he was cribbed from, this proves it was historical?

[Patrick Degan]

But all historical evidence is "hearsay," including the evidence for the existence of Voltaire and George Washington. In reality there is more evidence for Christ's existence than there is for the existence of most of the figures of the ancient world. Do you believe that Socrates existed? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? Think about this: we only know about Socrates because of Plato and Xenophon, and there are only a couple of sources for Alexander and Caesar. The documentary evidence for these men is limited to very few manuscripts which are sometimes dated centuries later. Yet no historian doubts that these men existed

This is one of the silliest arguments D'Souza tries to float in his rather cheap grandstanding for his upcoming book. It's also a very unoriginal argument, but more about that in a bit.

Only a couple of sources for Caesar? Wonder if he counted the Phillipics of Cicero among them? Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero was certainly a contemporary source —hell, a vitriolic critic— of the dictator Julius Caesar and his career. There are certainly many more chapters to Suetonius' The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars devoted to Julius Caesar than there are in the few lines mentioning Jesus. There's Caesar's own writings, the Commentaries on the Wars in Gaul, Africa, and Italy, contemporary busts and coins with Caesar's face stamped on them from his time. Plus, certain events such as the conquest of Gaul, the putative invasion of Britain, and the Civil War, all took place as according to the accounts of and by Caesar and for which overwhelming evidence exists (the Roman ruins in France should be a dead giveaway, to name one example). Perhaps that is why no historian doubts the existence of Julius Caesar.

Socrates? In addition to Plato and Xenophon, we have the playwright Aristophanes as witness who was Socrates' contemporary during the man's own lifetime. Alexander? A whole string of destroyed and created cities (most of which bear his name) and writings left in stone by his contemporaries as well as a letter from Alexander to the people of Chios also engraved in stone and dating to 332BCE.

The proposition that evidence for Voltaire or George Washington is "hearsay" is not only illogical but utterly unworthy of refutation even if you don't leaf through Washington's correspondences to the Continental Congress or read Voltaire's works or the correspondences (21,000 private letters) between the author and contemporaries such as the Marquis deSade.

By contrast, we get only a line or two from Flavius Josephus (which says less than apologists like D'Souza care to admit), a line or two in Tacitus (which is aimed more as a condemnation of Nero's persecution of this weird little cult to cover his own crimes), and a line or two by the Emperor Hadrian regarding the Christian cult but which says nothing about the alleged existence of the man alternatively called Jesus or Christus who is supposed to have founded it. There is also zero evidence for such biblical events as Herod's Massacre of the Innocents, the supposed Great Census of Augustus, or the alleged annual Passover pardon granted by the Romans to the Judeans as a pacification/propaganda measure.

It is certain that somebody named Jesus (or Joshua to get a lot closer to the actual name) who may have been a religio-political agitator may have lived in the alleged time period but that really says nothing. "Joshua" or "Yeshua" was about as common a name in Roman Judea as "John Smith" is in America and Britain today. So all we really get by way of that line or two in Josephus is that somebody named Joshua lived and preached for a time during that period. Big deal.

Finally, D'Souza isn't even being original. Variations of his argument have been floating around apologist circles for a good number of years now, one of the more recent iterations being Doug Shaver's from 2005.

So again, Big Deal.

[Darth Wong]

Most people of D'Souza's persuasion like to cite documents which were made much later, as if they were made at the time. I think that's where they get the idea that there was voluminous documentation.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

In one of my classical history courses, I think my professor said that in much of the literature, there's only an account of about three days of his life, if we accept that as genuine, even. Is that true?

[Rye]

Two possibilities:

1) A lot of people were spreading an incredibly distorted mixture of mythology and rumour, and some historians wrote their oral stories down as facts because that's simply how historians conducted themselves back then.

2) There really was a guy named Jesus who just happened to have a life story that was coincidentally identical to an amalgam of many local religious beliefs.

When you say "coincidentally identical to an amalgam of many local religious beliefs" what do you mean, exactly?

So your argument is that since the Jesus story wasn't a perfect match for one of the mythologies he was cribbed from, this proves it was historical?

I am saying that first and foremost, Jesus was presented as the davidic messiah, who was, among other things, meant to unite the jews and become a warrior king in his lifetime. Getting nailed to a tree is not in that description and the resurrection additions to the end of Mark by a different author (and subsequently the other gospels) make that look like it was tacked on after the fact because his actual death was such an obstacle to their claims of Jesus' messiah status. I recall reading once some early apologist comparing Jesus' crucifixion to a unicorn to give it more theological validity, basically, because they were at such a loss to explain it.

If you're saying Jesus' crucifixion part was cribbed from a preexisting mythology rather than historical, what are you basing that on?

[Darth Wong]

I am saying that first and foremost, Jesus was presented as the davidic messiah, who was, among other things, meant to unite the jews and become a warrior king in his lifetime. Getting nailed to a tree is not in that description and the resurrection additions to the end of Mark by a different author (and subsequently the other gospels) make that look like it was tacked on after the fact because his actual death was such an obstacle to their claims of Jesus' messiah status.

And did the handful of contemporary sources also confirm that he appeared to be the Davidic Messiah, in their off-hand vague mentions of him? No, that was a story made up after the fact.

I recall reading once some early apologist comparing Jesus' crucifixion to a unicorn to give it more theological validity, basically, because they were at such a loss to explain it.

Oh yeah, because the idea of a perfect human sacrifice to please the gods was sooooo innovative and original at the time. Surely, nobody had ever thought of such a thing before. Oh wait, that's actually a common feature in ancient cultures all around the world.

If you're saying Jesus' crucifixion part was cribbed from a preexisting mythology rather than historical, what are you basing that on?

There could easily have been some guy named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans. The Romans crucified people all the time. Hell, he could have even been a would-be prophet; there was no shortage of those guys either. But the problem is that "some guy who claimed to be a prophet and then got crucified" is not the Jesus story. It's the story of a shitload of anonymous people from that era. The Jesus story involves a guy who actually became a leader of people who inspired large crowds to follow him and hang on his every word (just for starters, even leaving aside all the miracle claims) and if enough of the story is just rumour or post-hoc bullshit, then the story itself is post-hoc bullshit.

[Covenant]

There could easily have been some guy named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans. The Romans crucified people all the time. Hell, he could have even been a would-be prophet; there was no shortage of those guys either. But the problem is that "some guy who claimed to be a prophet and then got crucified" is not the Jesus story. It's the story of a shitload of anonymous people from that era. The Jesus story involves a guy who actually became a leader of people who inspired large crowds to follow him and hang on his every word (just for starters, even leaving aside all the miracle claims) and if enough of the story is just rumour or post-hoc bullshit, then the story itself is post-hoc bullshit.

Since the divinity of Christ wasn't even decided upon until later, and differed greatly by source, and wasn't even agreed upon until the Council of Nicea (where the 'just a guy' school of thought went from being commonly and scholarly held to being turned heretical...), I think it's safe to say that the Jesus we see in the Bible in no way reflects a single man.

There were many Jesus'es around at the time--the name was quite common, as it is today, and there were other prophets and messiahs as well, all jostling for the title

As for contemporary sources...

There are several sources for Jesus' existance about 100 years or so afterwards, some before, but in general we have far more evidence for the existance of Barabus than for Jesus himself. Also, notably, there's no mention of many of the other things related to the Jesus myth--like the murder of the innocents and other quite eye-catching things that your populace would probably write about.

There is a great deal of evidence for the existance of Christians in the area, of course, so SOMETHING happened. Quite possibly Peter and Paul just decided to start it up themselves. What's even more sad is that there's also no evidence for Peter either, and there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that Peter is based on other fictional characters.

Which leaves us with the not-so-unreasonable assumption that fuckin' crazyass Paul made it all up himself.

There were other Messiahs at the time, as has been mentioned. Both Judas of Galilee and Athronges the Shepard fit the timeperiod, with Athronges actually rebelling against Herod Antipas. Sounds like a good time for messiahs!

[Rye]

And did the handful of contemporary sources also confirm that he appeared to be the Davidic Messiah, in their off-hand vague mentions of him? No, that was a story made up after the fact.

They weren't contemporary sources but I don't know that it was made up afterwards. Paul seems to think he was the Messiah only 10 or so years after he'd died, after apparently persecuting his established followers.

Oh yeah, because the idea of a perfect human sacrifice to please the gods was sooooo innovative and original at the time.

Oh yeah, the jews were well known for accepting human sacrifices, theologically.

Surely, nobody had ever thought of such a thing before. Oh wait, that's actually a common feature in ancient cultures all around the world.

And? The human sacrifice does not fit with the mythology it's trying to extrapolate from (i.e. first century judaism), so unless you can prove that one of these religions had influence over early christians (for instance, Paul), that's a red herring.

There could easily have been some guy named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans. The Romans crucified people all the time. Hell, he could have even been a would-be prophet; there was no shortage of those guys either. But the problem is that "some guy who claimed to be a prophet and then got crucified" is not the Jesus story. It's the story of a shitload of anonymous people from that era. The Jesus story involves a guy who actually became a leader of people who inspired large crowds to follow him and hang on his every word (just for starters, even leaving aside all the miracle claims) and if enough of the story is just rumour or post-hoc bullshit, then the story itself is post-hoc bullshit.

So, when Jesus submits to a rival messiah (John the Baptist), that's post hoc bullshit and we've got no reason to accept that that is historical? Or the assertions of Paul, the author of Mark and Josephus that Jesus was the brother of James? Go for it. Explain those in the context of vague mythicism and archetypal history. The thing as a whole is obviously full lof mythologisation and archetypes, but there's no credible denying that they're probably talking about the same guy.

[Mange]

That's why the only reason we're pretty sure about figures like Alexander is the fact that their existence was documented by so many people from so many different cultures. Saying "Aha, there were a half-dozen people in Rome who wrote about Jesus" doesn't mean shit.

While I agree with that response in regards to that weed, D'Souza, I think you're being a bit harsh here. What's the best explanation for jews and christians independently remarking not only upon some guy called Jesus as an average miracle worker and source of the christian cult, but his brother James and his relation to the temple?

Two possibilities:

1) A lot of people were spreading an incredibly distorted mixture of mythology and rumour, and some historians wrote their oral stories down as facts because that's simply how historians conducted themselves back then.

2) There really was a guy named Jesus who just happened to have a life story that was coincidentally identical to an amalgam of many local religious beliefs.

A third possibility: There was a guy named Jesus who did have followers but whose life and preachings were nothing like the mythology attributed to him in the gospels which consists of older myths. Paul was oblivious about the Jesus as portrayed in the gospels and never mentioned the virgin birth, events in Jesus's life, not a single one of the parables, not a word on the sermon of the mount, the passion etc. and often directly contradicts the teachings of 'Jesus'.