Hate to say it, but the whole white-washed Jesus thing has always been cringey from the first.
Dude was a Semitic man from 2000yrs ago, assuming he existed at all, or was later conflated as a single person, whatever. But he would have been a Semitic man from the times.
I.e., not some later Euro-looking dude, wearing impractical, bullshit white robes as a carpenter, lol.
Perfect example of how all gods are personal gods.
Well, an impersonal “god” such as the Hindu Brahman (etc) might defy that idea. Or my conception of The Cosmos-- vast and inscrutable, without the slightest interest in me, personally. Which, interestingly, helps me imagine myself as being a part of it, and not separate, as with typical Western Religion.
assuming he existed at all, or was later conflated as a single person, whatever.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus did exist as a real person and that’s who the figure in the bible is based on. Obviously not as a divine being or anything, but there was an actual Jewish preacher in the first century.
There were scads of such Jewish preachers as I understand it. For example, Monty Python’s Life of Brian was particularly great for being both a humor film, but also a surprisingly accurate one, in which such preachers were depicted.
I understand “Jesus” was indeed based on at least one person (“Yshua ben Yosef” perhaps), but my point is-- I don’t see any reason (as with most other figures in legend and mythology) why it couldn’t have been based on more than a single person. Because even the best evidence we have upon all this is little more than retold stories, edited and curated by people several centuries later.
Just heavily borrowing figures and legends from early mythos, a lot of them based in the Fertile Crescent as I understand it, i.e. Egyptian, and various civs between the Tigres & Euphrates rivers.
Hate to say it, but the whole white-washed Jesus thing has always been cringey from the first.
Dude was a Semitic man from 2000yrs ago, assuming he existed at all, or was later conflated as a single person, whatever. But he would have been a Semitic man from the times.
I.e., not some later Euro-looking dude, wearing impractical, bullshit white robes as a carpenter, lol.
Perfect example of how all gods are personal gods.
But believers will never grasp that.
It’s always one God and it’s definitely not you.
Well, an impersonal “god” such as the Hindu Brahman (etc) might defy that idea. Or my conception of The Cosmos-- vast and inscrutable, without the slightest interest in me, personally. Which, interestingly, helps me imagine myself as being a part of it, and not separate, as with typical Western Religion.
How’s that? We’re all brahman, the atman, that from which there is no whicher.
But apparently we’ve forgotten that.
I guess that condenses my thoughts above in to one idea, yes.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus did exist as a real person and that’s who the figure in the bible is based on. Obviously not as a divine being or anything, but there was an actual Jewish preacher in the first century.
Brian
There were scads of such Jewish preachers as I understand it. For example, Monty Python’s Life of Brian was particularly great for being both a humor film, but also a surprisingly accurate one, in which such preachers were depicted.
I understand “Jesus” was indeed based on at least one person (“Yshua ben Yosef” perhaps), but my point is-- I don’t see any reason (as with most other figures in legend and mythology) why it couldn’t have been based on more than a single person. Because even the best evidence we have upon all this is little more than retold stories, edited and curated by people several centuries later.
Jesus might as well be a ghost.
Bible also has a lot of Moses and his story almost certainly goes back to some ancient epos.
Just heavily borrowing figures and legends from early mythos, a lot of them based in the Fertile Crescent as I understand it, i.e. Egyptian, and various civs between the Tigres & Euphrates rivers.
What was it again; because he had a certain ethnic origin, he was actually more dark-skinned than the local population?
More time spent in the sun?
And hence, a certain variety of class distinction.