Jesus never lived?

“Jesus was originally perceived as a heavenly being whose death and reincarnation took place in heaven and was made known secretly in the Old Testament,” he said. “And in the early first century this secret was communicated by revelation to Paul, who preached widely. This message about Jesus was then mythified, just as other mystery cults had done with their gods.

“By the end of the first century,” Carrier continued, “some Christians had come to believe that the myths were real and assumed that Jesus was a real person. This sect of Christians eventually gained the political advantage and became what we know as orthodox Christianity, which only preserved texts that agreed with their interpretation and sometimes even forged or altered texts to advance their views.”

“Jesus conforms so closely to the criterion of a mythic hero the probability that he was a mythic hero increases substantially,” he said. “There are 22 features that have been identified by scholars that are commonly shared by many mythic heroes. They can be ranked with a score according to how many features they have. Jesus clearly scores at least 19 out of 22.”

According to Carrier, Jesus shares many of the following mythic traits, including a virgin birth and divine lineage. An attempt is made to kill him when he is a baby. He is spirited away from those plotting his murder. He is reared in a foreign country. He is crowned king. He reigns over a period of peace. He prescribes laws. He then loses favor with the gods or his subjects. He meets with a mysterious death. He dies at the top of a hill. His body turns up missing.

Jesus scores higher on this scale than almost all other heroes, including Hercules and Romulus, Carrier said. Only Oedipus scores higher.

“Jesus competes for second place only with Theseus and Moses,” he said. “Everyone who scores more than 11 on this scale is most likely mythical. No historical figures who accumulated some of these features by chance or legend, such as Alexander the Great or Augustus Caesar, scores even as high as 11.”

Damn I love this stuff! If there were not so many political stories to take my attention away from these themes I would probably write about them every day. I have spent much of my life studying religions and comparing them, looking for the similarities and differences. It is truly a fascinating subject.

Of course I can never talk about it because most people are very wary of having their religious views challenged. I do understand that. When one accepts certain things on faith and lives their lives accordingly they cannot risk discovering that they might have been mistaken and that everything they believe is nothing but fairytales.

It is a shame because I would love to talk to people of differing religious or philisophical views in a frank and non-adversarial conversation. I would be nice. I promise.