>>>My "spurious claims that there are thousands of historical references to Jesus made in his day"????

When did I claim that? I know of no such references, and haven't heard of such.

I simply think it is very likely that he existed, that's all,<<<

I'm not going to hunt the thread down but anyone who read it knows that you claimed there were all kinds of evidence that Jesus Christ existed. You were called on by me and at least one other poster to produce a shred of this evidence and you never did and you still haven't.

>>that he was a spiritual teacher and healer whose teachings had a dramatic effect on a relatively small group of followers in Judea at the time he was alive and immediately after<<

Source please.

>>I am not aware of these thousands of historical references from his day that you claim I alluded to. Never have I heard of them.<<

I don't know if you said "thousands" but you did say there was a great deal of evidence and you failed and still fail to back that up.

>>Yes, Christ (as presented in the sacred literature) is symbolic of "the sun", as well as "the son"...and that is probably why they say that the sun went dark at his death...not because it literally did, but because it's an allegorical statement of the type that spiritual texts are absolutely full of. Spiritual texts in those days were not written for the common people, who mostly couldn't read. They were written for adepts, people who had studied such matters most of their lives, and were familiar with the kind of allegory and metaphor used in the writings.<<

This is an admission that no such person existed and would not need to exist to amass a following.

>>It's only in relatively recent historical times that the Bible became a book read by the masses of common people, and taken literally by many or most of them.<<

Including you. As soon as you tell me he existed without any proof behind such a claim you are just as much a literalist.

>>Did you ever hear of the "mystery schools" in Egypt? Spiritual adepts studied at those schools in Jesus' day, and they learned to interpret symbols that would have been utterly opaque to the masses, and would have been taken literally. Those passages were symbolic.<<

Exactly. Do you realize you are talking out both sides of your mouth? And here's your proof, your follow-up statement that now completely contradicts what you just wrote:

>>I think the authors you mention were people on an emotional crusade. They wanted to believe Jesus never existed for their own personal reasons, for their own satisfaction, just like the people who leap on any thread such as this one any time they see it. Why they wanted to believe that would depend on their personal history, I suppose. It could be for a great many reasons.<<

It could be because there is NO EVIDENCE of anything you are saying.

>>There were, I'm sure, a lot of other new spiritual teachers roaming around back then too, with their followers. (There always are. There are right now. There always will be.) Most of them have been forgotten by history, and you can find no reference to them anywhere, but not John the Baptist and not Jesus...they have been remembered bigtime. That suggests to me that they most likely did exist.<<

Sure and Santa Claus exists because millions of children believe in him and there's pictures of Santa everywhere you go. I'm sure other gift-givers existed but they aren't remembered so there is your proof Santa is real.

>>And my suspicion that they did exist is every bit as credible as your suspicion that they did not...more so, in fact, because you HAVE no evidence whatsoever, cultural or otherwise. You just have an outright denial.<<

No, sir, it is you who are in denail. I won't beat around the bush with you any longer. Here's the truth:

You, sir, are a Christian fundamentallist in liberal guise. Unlike other fundies, you formed liberal opinions. But like fundies, you have one core belief that cannot ever be admitted to be wrong: That there was a Jesus Christ who walked in Palestine at some point. This you are incapable of denying no matter what because. like a fundie, you have staked your entire belief system on it.

I'm sure you'll deny it but it was you who started posting me after I stated that Christianity is not believable if you study it closely enough. You, in fact, demanded that I explain it. If you were truly of a liberal mind of such things you would have shrugged it off. Instead, like a fundie, you argued it and argued it and argued it while talking through your hat the whole time.

For you, like a fundie, the absence of any reference to Jesus made by well educated writers of his time and the generation after doesn't prove he didn't exist because he was too obscure to be widely known. This flies in the face of the gospel story which clearly stated his name was spread far and wide and that many came to see him and the authorities wanted him dead. Then you need to explain how this obscure man that no one mentioned suddenly becomes the most important man in Western history some 300 years after he would have already died. You neglect to mention christianity was made into a big time religion by Constantine. When the emperor says you're going to be a Christian, you're going to be one. THAT is how christianity got so big. Nothing more.

When I brought up that Paul is the earliest Christian writer and mentioned nothing about the historical Jesus, your response was, "I don't like Paul." Well, I guess that takes care of that.

For all your new age univeral salvation bs, you are just another dogmatic fundie unable to let go of an historical Jesus to the point you're are now telling me he really lived but his followers wrote about him as though he was the sun and clothed everything he did in allegory. Then the whole thing is a lie--all of it, both the history and the allegory. You can't have it both ways. To insist you can, is to insist that Jesus was exactly who the fundies say he was. You can't get around it.