I can't ask for more than that.  Personally, I don't care one bit if Jesus existed or not: if he did, he was just a Jewish preacher proclaiming a First Century message about the end of the world.  One that quickly proved to be wrong.  So if the Jesus Myth hypothesis was coherent and compelling, I'd be perfectly happy to embrace it.  It's just that it looks to me to be too obviously a contrived argument invented by people who want to take scepticism about Christianity to an absurdly unsustainable level, purely for ideological reasons.  And ideological motivations always make for really bad historical analysis. 

No, I'm assuming no such thing.  I have no problem with the idea that the writers of the gospels (leaving these mysterious "creators of the Jesus story" to one side) and their sources made some interpretations of Messianic traditions and texts which are clearly strained, dubious or plainly bungled.  There's no question about that.  But the point is:

(i) All the other texts they use, misuse or bungle actually are Messianic texts or ones traditionally associated with the coming Messiah, whereas Judges 13 isn't.

(ii) The association with the so-called "prophecy" in Matt 2:23 with Judges 13 is little more than a guess anyway.  

(iii) For something that was suposedly introduced to the story on the basis of a text that wasn't a Messianic prophecy in the first place, Nazareth plays a very major part in the story.  And a remarkably negative one.  Over and over again, the fact that Jesus is a Nazarene is raised as a reason NOT to believe his Messianic claim, the people of Nazareth reject him and, in one episode, even try to kill him.  This is a very weird role for Nazareth to play if it's meant to be a proof that he IS the Messiah.

So that explanation really doesn't hang together very coherently.  Like many Jesus Myth arguments, it seems to be some special pleading to explain away something that doesn't fit with the the theory.  That sort of argument requires assuming the Jesus Myth conclusion in order to come up with an argument to preserve that conclusion.  That kind of circular reasoning is one of the reasons the Jesus Myth is a fringe idea of no academic respectability. 

That's a good question and it's one that fundie apologists have spilled a lot of ink trying to answer.  They believe that the Bible is inerrant, so if Matthew says there is a prophecy about Jesus that can't be found in the OT, this poses them a major problem.  I won't bore you with their convoluted "solutions" because they are irrelevant here.

So why does Matthew put this "prophecy" in here if it doesn't actually exist?  A clue lies in the words he uses to introduce the supposed text: "So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."  Note that he refers not to a prophet, but more broadly (and vaguely) to "the prophets" (plural).  Which prophets?  Where?  Who knows.  And that seems to be the point.

Elsewhere Matthew is far more specific.  His usual formula for introducing a prophecy is to name the prophet (eg Matt 2:17) or to quote the prophecy directly (eg  Matt 1:22-23)  and refer to "the prophet" (singular) who made it.  But here he is non-specific, oddly vague and uses a broader plural.

The reason seems to be that he had attempted to show how all the other major events in the story fitted with Messianic prophecies, but there was no such prophecy about Nazareth.  So this rather vague so-called "prophecy" is invoked, though with a formula that doesn't make it clear which "prophets" supposedly "said" the Messiah was to be from Nazareth. It waves a generalised sort of prophecy over Nazareth without actually citing one specifically.

The reason for the need to invent this non-existent prophecy and couch it in this vague attribution was the fact that Nazareth was a stumbling block for Jews who were considering adopting Christianity (ie Matthew's primary audience). Not only was it a town of no religious significance, it was in Galilee - a place called "Galilee of the Gentiles" to the more fastidious Jews in less multicultural and religiously diverse Judea.  Matthew (or his sources) needed to try to soften the problems that Jesus' Nazarean origins posed to potential converts.

And he/they needed to do this because he did exist and he was from Nazareth. 

Since the works of the NT were written before any agreement on what constituted OT "Scripture", that's not too surprising though. 

 Umm, that's assuming the Jesus Myth conclusion again.  Why didn't they do that?  And who were these people anyway?  What was their motivation?  When and where did they invent this non-existent Messiah?  How did they manage to achieve this without anyone - Christian or otherwise - noticing or remembering that Jesus had never actually existed?  Why is there no evidence of these supposed original Christians who didn't believe in a real Jesus?

There are just too many implausible suppositions in this story and too much that needs to happen too quickly, all without leaving the slightest trace or memory, for this fantasy version of Christianity's origins to be plausible.  Sure, you can invent a story, but one that's too highly contrived and too silly to take seriously as history.  

No arguments there.  But that's not a good reason to take scepticism about the NT stories to the absurd level whereby there was no Jesus at all.  That there was a guy who these stories attached themselves to makes to a much more plausible story that requires less suppositions that the Jesus Myth version.  And Occam's Razor is not kind to theories with lots of contrived suppositions dangling from them. 

Since new evidence is unlikely to turn up soon, we are left with what we have.  As with so many other questions in ancient and medieval history, conclusive evidence is absent.  So we are left with what reconstruction of the facts is most plausible, requires the least suppositions and is least driven by modern philosophical and ideological ulterior motives.  The Jesus Myth fails all those tests. 

I'm not sure what this means.  I don't give them much credence at all, except as statements about what later First Century people believed.  They are also our major sources of information about what may have happened in the earlier First Century, despite their clear faults and frustrating limitations.  That's how I use them. 

I agree with you concerning these errors, but to lump in the Markian author with true hack jobs like Matthew is an error. The Markian author was quite skilled at creating Midrash, his writing style, featuring complex pericopes, is actually impressive from a literary stance.

In addition, when you consider, further, how he well he used his source material (The OT, particularly the books of Kings, Daniel, Samuel, etc.)  you should come away impressed with his creative skills. 

I agree with you concerning the Matthew author, he was a blundering hack. The Luke and John authors were not much better. But the Markian author was a skilled story teller.

Michael A. Turton's Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, does a wonderful job of demonstrating that "Mark" is a skillfuly written 'Midrash' and therefore not history.

His site was formerly located here:

http://users2.ev1.net/%7Eturton/GMark/GMark_index.html

I believe it was taken down so that he could present the work as a published book. The site can still be found here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060427175532/users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark_index.html)

Michael Turton writes:

If Mark is history, where are the reliable methods for uncovering it? If Mark knew real traditions, why would be bother to parallel some other story every time Jesus does something major? It's not like this is a sometime thing. Almost every story in Mark draws on the OT, and Mark often tells you where he got it from one way or another (and if he doesn't, that fussbudget Matthew certainly will). The few stories that are not OT in origin have a narrative function, and of course, are so totally bound up with the supernatural that they are certainly fiction -- sometimes both (as in the Gerasene Demoniac, for example, though that has OT echoes too).

 More here: http://www.rationalresponders.com/the_gospels_are_midrash

Wait, come again? I've never heard the cardinal directions thing. Was that actually the reasoning of the canonization council? 

Here we go again with this "canonization council" nonsense. It would be good if people here who want to talk about how the Canon came to be would actually do some reading on the matter instead of desperately clinging to this simplistic myth of some non-existent "Council" that chose which books made the cut. That's a nice, neat, simple idea and - like most such ideas in the study of history - it's also totally wrong.

The Canon formed by a long process of consensus over several centuries from the mid-Second Century to the end of the Fourth. The first and only full Ecumenical Council that made any kind of declaration on the matter was the Council of Trent, and that was in 1562. There were several local synods that, in the late Fourth Century, endorsed what had already developed as the established Canon, but that's about it. And it was not even on the agenda at the Council of Nicea. If anyone wants to do some real reading on how, when and why the Canon developed they could start with Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, then Lee M. McDonald and J.A. Sanders, The Canon Debate, Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance and finally David Dungun's Constantine's Bible: Politics And the Making of the New Testament.

All of these studies show that the process was far from simple, took about two centuries and that no mythcial "canonization council" was involved. Dungun's book concentrates several key chapters on the methodology used to determine the "canonicity" of a given text, demonstrating how the method used had been adapted from that used in a similar process by the Greek philosophical schools.

There's quite a bit in the real history of how the Christian Bible came to be that wouldn't give the average fundie a lot of comfort about their "divinely inspired" book, but the idea that it was cobbled together via some arbitary process by some silly/evil dudes with beards at some "canonization council" is pure simplistic garbage.

As is the idea that the Bible contains four gospels because there are four cardinal points of the compass. What "todangst" seems to be referring to is Irenaeus' passage on the four gospels in his Against Heresies (III.11.8 ). There he links the four gospels which he upholds as canonical (this was back in around 180 AD) to the "four living creatures" of Revelations 4:7 and Ezekiel 1:10. who he associated with the four cardinal points of the compass (something not found in either Revelations or Ezekiel).

What Ireneaus is doing here is saying that the four "living creatures" in both texts represent the four gospels that were already upheld as being the earliest and most authoritative. He then argues that "It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are." and "proves" this by a series of mystical assocations - eg there are "four zones of the world" and "four principal winds" (from the four cardinal points of the compass) so "it is fitting that [the Church] should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh." (Adversus Haereses,
III, 11, 8)

How anyone could get the weird idea from this passage that there were four gospels chosen because there were four principle winds is a mystery. Analysis based on that kind of boneheaded misunderstanding of the source material is always going to end up in total nonsense. If there had been five accepted gospels, or seven or nine Irenaeus would have found some mystical association with those numbers as well. It was the number of accepted gospels that drove the mystic association, not the other way around.

And now "todangst" has added this:

If this was a "rationalization given after the fact" then this means we not only have non-existent fantasy "Councils" deciding on the Canon, but we have them doing so before 180 AD!! The amazing things I'm learning here seem to never cease.

Anyway, back to Thandar's post above:

Maybe.

Definite knowledge is elusive about all kinds of things in the study of pre-Modern history - that comes with the territory. This leaves us to try to determine what is more likely. The huge mountain of suppositions required to sustain the idea that someone (who?) invented Jesus wholesale (why?) and just a few decades later this fact had been totally forgotten means that I simply find this theory too implausible. Occam's Razor indicates that the much simpler idea that a preacher became the focus of a series of religious legends requires fewer suppositions and is therefore far more likely.

Another occupational hazard when dealing with ancient texts. Look at some of the superstitious nonsense in Suetonius for example - utter nonsense that plainly did not happen. But we have to use the material we have, not the stuff we'd like to have. Some dispassionate Jew or Greek writing a letter to a learned friend describing how these ridiculous Christians came into being drawing on eye-witness source material and using reasoned historical analysis would be great, but we don't have such a letter. Until we do, we have to use what we have - warts, nonsense and all.

Yes, you can. But some of them are going to fit the evidence better than others. Where this one fits the evidence better is in the fact that the so-called prophecy about the Messiah being a "Nazarene" sticks out in two ways: (i) there is no such prophecy and (ii) the vague reference to "prophets" (plural) that introduces it. Clearly something odd is going on here. If we then look at the role that Nazareth plays in the rest of the narrative we start to get an idea of what is happening - Jesus' Nazareth origin was a stumbling block to early Christianity and it wasn't one they could simply ignore. Thus the invented "prophecy".

The idea that this is a bungled interpretation of the passage in Judges 13, on the other hand, doesn't explain the evidence as well. Firstly, that's not a Messianic prophecy and was never regarded as such and, secondly, introducing Nazareth on the basis of that misreading simply created far more problems that it was worth.

Why are you thinking that in order to accept that there was an historical man behind the stories you have to also accept that the sources are "trustworthy"? I don't consider them "trustworthy" at all - they are even less "trustworthy" than most ancient sources due to their highly mystical and polemical nature. But you don't have to consider them "trustworthy" to utilise them. Quite the opposite in fact; you need to handle them with extreme scepticism and constantly ask "why are they saying that?"

And so its hardly surprising that this is precisely what we do find. Throughout the gospels we find their writers making asides or inserting stories which seem to be there purely to counter precisely these kinds of attacks on Christianity. The villains of the piece are consistently the Pharisees and "the Scribes and leaders of the people", though by the time we get to John this has been simplified to "the Jews" (as though Jesus and his lads were Spaniards or something). This chorus of critics accuse Jesus of using demonic power to cast out demons, they say he hasn't got the authority to heal by forgiving sins and they say he's a fraud and a madman.

Whether there really were people saying these things to Jesus in his time or not (there probably were), we can be pretty sure that there were people saying these things in the time that the gospels were being written and that these episodes are included as answers to these criticisms. These criticisms of the Notzri (the "Nazarenes" - there's that Nazareth place again) continued in Judaism down the centuries, with Jesus condemned as a madman, a sorcerer and a fraud.

As for whether he could actually have done any "miracles" or whether these were all invented, if we look at them, most of them aren't terribly impressive. They are your typical faith healer stuff and you'll find all kinds of similar "miracles" at revival meetings any day of the week. James Randi has done some excellent research on how a combination of psychosomtic symptoms and plain old religious hysteria can account for all kinds of "miracles". And since people around here seem to like stuff by Richard Carrier, he's written a good essay on how easy it was to be regarded as a miracle worker in the ancient world.

I hope so. Though out of that list we don't see any First Century material apart from some of the DSS texts. Things like the Gospel of Judas are interesting, but they are about as useful when it comes to knowing about what was happening in the First Century as a set of American Civil War letters forged last week are for learning about the American Civil War. And the "Jesus Tomb" thing was useful only for comedy value.

"Cannot be determined with any degree of certainty from the information given" would be more accurate. And that's usually how it goes in the study of ancient history.

There's a similar debate in early medieval history about the existence of "King Arthur". We have a few dubious references to an historical Arthur, but none of them are contemporary and all of them have problems. Then we have later legends which are full of obvious nonsense, complete with magic swords, dragons and headless green giants and, finally, a promise that Arthur will return from the dead.

So is there a Fifth or Sixth Century historical warlord behind all this? The answer most historians give is "Probably yes". How much we can say we can reasonably know about him is another thing entirely (though some of the kookier amateur theorists would have you believe they can tell you his shoe size, favourite colour and taste in ice cream).

Interestingly, what we don't have is an "Arthur Mythist" hypothesis, with people vehemently arguing against the idea that any sort of historical Arthur ever existed. It would be easy to maintain such a position - far easier, in fact, than it is with Jesus. I suspect that the reason there are "Jesus Mythicists" but no "Arthur Mythicists" is less to do with any objective analysis of history and more to do with anti-Christian ideological axes in need of grinding.

I learned long ago that historical analysis driven by any ideology always results in junk history. And that's even in cases, such as this one, where I share the ideology in question.

Nothing in my response provides an acceptance of the claims of 'cannonization councils'.

Yes. We can file this under "Shit Sherlock, No"

I make what I am referring to abundantly clear, considering that I posted the quote.

Here's the quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The saintly Bishop of Lyons, Irenæus (died 202), who had known Polycarp in Asia Minor, not only admits and quotes our four Gospels, but argues that they must be just four, no more and no less. He says: "It is not possible that the Gospels be either more or fewer than they are. For since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the Spirit of life; it is fitting that we should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side and vivifying our flesh. . . The living creatures are quadriform, and the Gospel is quadriform, as is also the course followed by the Lord" (Adv. Hær., III, xi,

How anyone could read my posts and come away with that conclusion is a larger mystery, unless of course they are so interested in violating the basic principle of charity that is required for civil adult discourse that they are simply looking to troll the boards.

The reference to the four zones does in fact speak to the rest of the passage and the 'reasoning' behind it.

So your assessment of my post is in error.

I agree that your miseading of my posts is fucking moronic. You're doing little more than trolling here, and you're being warned at this point.

You're quite lost already, you should quit while you're behind...

One more time: Nothing in my post affirms the existence of such councils.  

You have a serious reading comprehension problem. Tbe actual point here is that this is a rationaliztion after the fact vis-a-vis the matter of there being 'four gospels' being already decided in the eyes of Iraneus; Irenæus is not holding that this was the grounds for anyone making any 'original decision' about the gospels.

Please stop replying to my post until you get a new pair of glasses. You're post is a troll post, and I don't look forward to dealing with more trolling, particuraly when it's based on your inability to even read a post accurately.

I'll admit.  I don't know from Midrashim.  Maybe in the original Mark is an excellent brilliantly written midrash.  Maybe it's a clever limerick in the original.  But in translation, accessible to me, it looks like a failed attempt at telling a story and relating it to the Hebrew biblical tradition. 

Maybe my approach to Mark is like reading E.E. Cummings and Walt Whitman as if their works were a newspaper article.  Maybe if I were familiar with the literary form I might be less likely to consider it crap.  But whether it is beautiful poetry or just error filled crap, what it is not is any reliable resource on which to formulate an opinion on the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

The way I look at it--and it's way too unimportant for me to waste much time on--is that Mark was full of blunders that Matthew and Luke tried to correct as they cribbed most of their gospels from them.

This is my whole problem with the Bible and the Qu'ran for that matter.  In arguing with believers there is a double standard. In order to accept the teachings of those books, a superficial acquaintance with a short summary is all that is required.  But to reject them as unreliable, you have to read them in the original and be familiar with the literary forms, the allusions, and the traditions of the time.  Nonsense.  If these  books had been inspired by an omniscient and all-powerful god, they'd be good enough to hold up under translation.  

Now I feel like I'm seeing the same double standard again.  I shouldn't criticize Mark for misquoting earlier scripture and not making any sense because it's not narrative but some literary form called a midrash in which people try to wring meaning out of incomprehensible bits of scripture. 

Maybe I don't understand what they are, but what they're not.  They're not a reliable narrative allowing me to formulate an opinion as to whether their protagonist was based on a real person. 

Oh, I don't necessarily disagree, I just feel that the Markian author displays a talent for writing, i.e. his use of pericopes.

Yes, good analysis of the situation.

lol. Well, agreed. Yes, in fact, a very well written poetic masterpiece would actually undermine the likelihood of it being a historical document, right? I mean, the real world doesn't fit into neat stanzas.

Well, Ok, this is one valid way to see it. But I find the Matthew author to be a bigger creator of blunders.

Excellent point. They don't turn away potential believers for not having read their bible.

Indeed. But to me, once you make this point, you have to go even further and agree with  Thomas Paine that no god would use any book at all, seeing  as a 'god' using a book would be akin to the president of Verizon using tin cans and string to call the hospital during a heart attack.

Well, I agree here. 

Not that I'm convinced or anything, but I do think it's strange that this exchange of postings has been more effective than anything any Christian has told me yet in making me think there just may have actually been a historical Jesus of Nazareth.  If I may damn with faint praise, this is a better argument for his existence as a historical figure than anything Lee Strobel has written.

Still, I think the evidence is pretty weak.  I still think the best answer is
"I don't know."  But it may be worth looking at some more.

Todangst, unless I missed it, I haven't seen a post where you refute the original claim of this thread. How could multiple independent (Mark, Q, Thomas) sources contain sayings with similar characteristics (refer to the beginning of the thread to examine characteristics of authentic sayings of Jesus).

How are they independent?

Thomas and Mark could have relied on Q.

Thomas is not even accepted as a gospel, so I don't see how Thomas can be both a recording of Jesus and yet not worthy of being a gospel. Can you?

Q need not be a set of sayings of Jesus at all. 

By the way, I have a question for you. Let's say that the Markian or Lukian author was privy to the sayings of Jesus the Christ. Why is it that we have Mark, or Luke, and not the sayings that these writer relied on?  Wouldn't that be like holding onto the the bank envelope your money  comes in, and tossing away the cash?

Let's say you are trying to prove a case. You have evidence, and a report you've written upon it. Which do you value more?

I'm impressed that you are so open minded. I don't see the existence of an apologetic response as evidence or existence, after all you can find the same process in Islam.

Ok, I was surprised to see you mention him, seeing as you seem so far above his level of discourse. Thanks for explaining. 

Agreed! Man is a meaning maker.... there will be meaning, even if the 'data stream' is a set of random dots.

I'd like to see you read Rook Hawkin's book, he's working on it now, and he and I review his chapters together. Your responses would be interesting.  

The Markian author was clearly comparing/basing the story of Jesus on Moses, I'd hardly call that an embarrassing template for Jews, would you?!

I'm always happy to read books, [http://www.myspace.com/thandarr for some examples] although I'm almost completely undependable when it comes to any kind of schedule. Weird job.

Speaking of books, supposedly I'm co-writing one. My brother used to be a Christian, but he got better. He read the Bible a lot when he was a Christian. He now believes that you could debunk the bible with nothing but the internal inconsistencies of the Bible itself. He wants me to help him write a book, because although he has the material, he thinks I have a better writing style and a better handle on organization. You can see how bad he must be. He says he's ready to go "Michael Moore" on his former co-religionists. I've found that the most serious objectors to Christianity are those who have actually experienced it firsthand. We were brought up with Christianity, but I never let it bother me much. He did. He took it real seriously. I'm glad to help him, but I've read just about all the bible I want to.

Seriously, we've been "working" on this book at a rate that, if it continues, we ought to have a first draft in about seven hundred years.

  The "Jesus Seminar" is a very small group of extremely liberal teachers, possibly Masons (with an agenda to destroy traditional faith) and represent a very fringe group in America. They have been criticized by several scholars in America and Europe for their unfounded methodologies. European scholars think they are a joke. Even the Society of Biblical Literature has completely rejected their totally unwarranted hypotheses. At least, however, most, if not all, fellows of the JS admit to the historicity of Christ. His historicity is not even disputed today except by a very small and insignificant group of atheists, who are not even Jesus historians.I find it interesting that atheists are so desperate to discredit Jesus. By doing this, they only show how important Jesus is for Christian theism. Jesus and God are intertwined, and the atheist knows this. Therefore, the atheist is desperate to dismiss His existance.The Five Gospels theory is refuted on multiple websites. Here is one:http://www.apologeticsinfo.org/papers/fivegospels.htmlJewish scholar. Jacob Nousner (not sure on last name spelling) said that the JS is the biggest scholastic fraud since Piltdown man. 

ON THE HISTORICAL JESUS

http://www.christiancadre.org/ topics/historicaljesus.html

http://www.bede.org.uk/price8.htm

 I think Lee Strobel has done a wonderful job. Infact, The Case for Christ, comes out as a movie on DVD September 11. I think that's today.

http://www.strobelfilms.com/

 Several scholars are now rising to take a stand against all the lies, deceit and false propaganda that is running rampant on atheist internet sites. Go to the scholars, not the internet for the truth about the historical Christ. The internet is full of non-historians and lies.

Lee Strobel has consulted with the worlds leading scholars on the historical Jesus topic. Specifically, the atheist claim that Christianity borrowed from paganism. THESE ARE ALL LIES. And these scholars prove it. Read his new book :

The Case for the Real Jesus.

http://www.leestrobel.com/info_TCFTRJ.php

It deals specifically with the pagan "copy-cat" theory. And shreads it.

Having read this thread through, I'm confused why it ended the way it did, with a member banned and his last post deleted. As far as I can tell, this whole thing is niggling over whether an historical, non-supernatural Jesus existed based on available texts (i.e. whether the references can be considered independent, and whether sayings suggest a single source, and whether that source was Jesus). The banned member, who argued in favor of a mediocre, apocalyptically-fixated Jesus, doesn't exhibit any of the hallmarks of a troll, actually seeming to make an effort to present well-reasoned arguments. Comparing this to posts by Kabane52, or Apotheon, it's not apparent to me why the discussion had to be shut down.

Appeal from authority.

Another dimwitted claim by an unbeliever. Do you even have a fucking clue what historical evidence is? Can you even explain to us what evidence is in general? Can you please tell us what the criteria is for determining historical evidence, and what isn't historical evidence? 

The use of a greco-roman biography to "prove" that Jesus existed, is like using a greco-roman biography to "prove" that Jesus existed. 

If you don't have a clue as to what you're talking about, save yourself the embarrassment, and don't try to come off as you do. 

If only you had that Greco-Roman biography instead of the fiction of the Gospels...

Actually this is exactly what they deny. The above is exactly what the vast majority of the historical community agree with (excluding fundies and mythicist). The entire mythicist position is built on this denial, if it weren't so than they wouldn't be mythicist, but individuals agreeing with the historical consensus. 

The gospels are not the biography of a Rabbi claiming to be the messiah. It's an amalgamation of tales about a character calling himself the son of God.

You can't have a biography of a fictional character and call it more than fiction - the son of God is a fictional character - just like his dad.

Just because they were written in a greco-roman style and were the backstory of a fictional character does not make them historical biographies.

Actually, the ball's in your court - what do you have that makes the gospels non fiction (other than the writers putting in "This is nonfiction" in some form in the text)? I mean the Odyssey was written in a popular Greek style and listed some actual geographic places - by your logic, that makes Odysseus a real person.

This has been gone over several times in the course of this thread, and apparently you and others keep missing it. And I think I understand the dilemma, and that is that most of you don't have a clue as to what distinguishes modern biographies from premodern biographies, particularly those written in the Greco-Roman world. 

Let's me ask you a question, if a greco roman biography was written about a rabbi who was perceived as the messiah would we expect to find some tales of his life mirroring that of let's say Moses, i.e. the slaying of the innocent, the escape from Pharaoh? 

And I asked you this question before, but you didn't answer it then, so I'm going to ask it again: If there was an actual rabbi named Jesus who was perceived as the messiah, how would his greco-roman biography be written differently than the Gospels?

You shouldn't feel embarrassed to admit you don't have enough knowledge of pre-modern history to say much on the subject of Greco-Roman biographies. It's less embarrassing to admit this, than continuing on pretending like you have a clue. 

Wide spread mythicist delusions allow this mode of thinking to be perceived as true. I would be really persuaded by mythicist if it were true that the Mark used used Homer's stories about Odysseus as a model, and that according to Hawkins that "Jesus is Odysseus." But it requires that I sacrifice my intelligence and accepts delusions as truth to believe that Jesus eating food with his disciples during the passover, is a plagiarism of Odysseus eating with his crewmen, or that Romulus hiding in the bushes, has an "uncanny" similarity to the disciples inability to recognize the man in Luke's Emmaus narrative.  

I would be persuaded by the mythicist position if all those words that are deemed as authentic of the historical Jesus were shown to be copy and paste of the religious thoughts of others, and that they were not unique to Jesus, or his spin, if it could be shown that go the second mile, when the Angaria demanded one mile, was spoken by someone else, and etc....

But rather what one finds is tripe, masquerading as diamonds. Romulus and Jesus, tripe. Jesus and Odysseus, tripe, and yet these are two arguments for copy and paste made by Hawkins, the grand daddy of the mythicist position on the RRS. I dare any individual here to take this argument up again here. I'll enjoy embarrassingly ripping them up with ease. Any takers?

When I read the mythicist argument it sounds very similar to the logic one find among creationist, and bible-code believers, 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  Their delusion seem apparent to everyone else but them. I want cure them of their delusions, but it's hard task when they are so entrenched in them.

Uhm the gospels were written about a rabbi named Jesus, who was perceived as the Son of the God, as the Christ. The gospels were not written about a Jesus who was just a typical rabbi, but Jesus who was a rabbi perceived as the Christ. This is an important distinction, that you need to keep in mind. 

I suggest you familiarize yourself with historical method more, because if you even had a passing understanding of it, you wouldn't have wrote this. Historians (excluding fundies) make a distinction between the Jesus of history, and the Jesus of the faith tradition. Whenever a historian is dealing with pre-modern biography he is going to have to make similar distinctions, such as fictional components and non-fictional components of a pre-modern biography.

When the historical consensus claims that Jesus was a historical person it is exactly the point that you have just mentioned, that there existed a rabbi named Yeshua, that the gospel writers patterned their biographical narrative off on, and that this is a far more probable explanation of the all the evidence we have on hand, than not. The criteria needed to claim Jesus existed in a historical sense, is just this. 

The Jesus myth hypothesis is counter to the consensus view, in that it's their view that the Gospels were not patterned after a real rabbi (possibly one named Yeshua) perceived as the messiah. 

A simple distinction between modern and premodern biographies, particularly of individuals of relative importance, is that modern biographies are written to tell what is, premodern biographies are written to tell what "what is" means, the meaning of a persons life is conveyed, and that the conveying of meaning trumps a purely literal account of his life. 

A historian dealing with premodern historical narratives and biographies reconstruct these accounts distinguishing components of meaning and deriving the source of that meanings to determine what is. This is why there is a distinction between the Jesus of the faith tradition (the Jesus of meaning) and the Jesus of History (the Jesus of what is)

Where do you get this rubbish from? When greco-roman historians freely invent speeches for historical persons, and admit to doing so, when pre-modern historians like Plutrach and Herodutus attempt to convey the meaning of persons life in their biographical narratives, facts are clearly not the holy grail as you make them out to be. 

I'll ask this question again from my previous post: If a greco roman biography was written about a rabbi who was perceived as the messiah would we expect to find some tales of his life mirroring that of let's say Moses, i.e. the slaying of the innocent, the escape from Pharaoh? 

Would we expect to find fictional components such as this in the biography, that are not facts?

No, you didn't, and I didn't mention what I did, as a counter to what you did say about Odysseus and Jesus. And in reading your post again, it was perhaps not relevant to your post at all. But it's a typical claim made by mythicist on this forum, and I saw a place in my post to mention it, real quickly, and I did just that. 

How does this make sense? A moment ago you were arguing that characterisitics of jesus in the gospels pointed to his historicity... yet these characteristics are specifically in the bible and apply specifically to a jesus of the gospel, so I don't get it. It's like you are taking the character of indiana jones and trying say that based on 5 authors writing about him and his personality the same, prove that there was an original archeologist he was based on. Which I don't know if there was, but the characteristics of the character in the book have nothing to say about whether or not there was a true man they are based on, period. It just doesn't make sense