5 ms·

The Roman's crucified a lot of people, I would think they had the system pretty well down. In general what you are talking about is Euhemerism, trying to figur

• srean 9y ago
  I see, thanks for teaching me a new word. > pretty poorly regarded these days. Why is that ? Because it is a touchy subject ? That I can certainly understand
  • throwawayxbdi8 9y ago
    Because it ignores the fact that sometimes people make up bullshit for power or control and other people believe it because they were illiterate commoners from thousands of years ago.
    • rbanffy 9y ago
      The part when he flies to heaven would also need a pretty impressive explanation.
    • hossbeast 9y ago
      What about present day believers?
      • olavk 9y ago
        Er yes, what about them? What are you asking?
        • hossbeast 9y ago
          "illiterate commoners from thousands of years ago" does not describe or explain present day believers
          • olavk 9y ago
            But that has no bearing on how the legends in question initially came to be.
  • neaden 9y ago
    Once again I want to make it clear I'm just an interested layman, not a historian and claim no expertise on all this. I think the problem is you are picking and choosing what you think is true from a given text, and then offering up an explanation that you can neither prove nor falsify. To use a less touchy example let's say I wanted to come up with a Euhemeristic explanation for the Minotaur. Well obviously Pasiphaë didn't really get pregnant from a bull, so maybe instead she just gives birth to a deformed child. And the child can't literally have horns, so maybe he just had gigantism and some sort of weird growths on his head. And Athen's presumably wasn't really sacrificing 14 youths to be eaten by this person so maybe the king just demanded Athens supply a bride for his deformed child. And the Minotaur couldn't have really lived in an elaborate maze so maybe Theseus just sneaked into the palace and stabbed the dude. Well now I have a reasonablish explanation of the "real story" behind the myth, a deformed child is born to a king who rejects him, an unwilling bride is almost forced to marry him, and then Theseus sneaks in and stabs him. But someone else could come up with a fairly different "real story" for all of this based on what they picked and chose from. And neither of our stories would have any real proof, or provide any real insight in the lives of the ancient Greeks. The story itself does provide insight on what the people who told it thought about the world, what they thought was moral and immoral, heroic and cowardly etc. So the myth/religious text on it's own does have historical value.
    • srean 9y ago
      > Once again I want to make it clear I'm just an interested layman, not a historian and claim no expertise on all this. I am the same here (and not even a Christian, just a curious observer). I think you went overboard in your accusations here > I think the problem is you are picking and choosing what you think is true from a given text, and then offering up an explanation that you can neither prove nor falsify. I would have to be informed enough in the first place to be able to pick and choose. Seems I have stirred up a hornets nest. Given the situation, I have no further intention to participate in the thread. Regardless, > offering up an explanation that you can neither prove nor falsify this I will eagerly concede. I just did not realize my off-hand thinking aloud would be an object of such scrutiny. I should have known better.
  • olavk 9y ago
    Historians do try to figure out the "real story", and much have been written about the "historical Jesus", but the practice of finding natural explanations of supernatural events is not well regarded because it is often purely speculation. I used the example of Jesus walking on water in another thread. A natural explanation might be it was a cold day and there was actually ice on the lake. Sure this is a possible explanation, but there is absolutely no evidence and no way to substantiate such a theory, and it is clear our closest sources did believe he walked on water. So from a historians standpoint the ice-explanation is useless. Furthermore these natural explanations often are a bit naive since they take the stories at face values and just try to explain away the supernatural aspects. Isn't it actually more plausible the event s just a legend or myth rather than Jesus actually walked on ice? As for the resurrection, which the "swoon theory" tries to explain naturally, be aware that the oldest known version of the oldest Gospels doesn't even feature a resurrected Jesus. Just an unidentified white-clad guy which says Jesus is resurrected. You don't really medical explanations for how this could come to happen.
• danielam 9y ago
  Is it? My impression is that this is quite common, where "real story" is some reductionistic account of something biblical (e.g., Reza Aslan's "Zealot").
  • olavk 9y ago
    It is quite popular in fiction, bit it is not well-regarded in history or theology. The reason is it is pure speculation. Eg. you might posit when Jesus walked on water, it was actually ice. Sure, this makes the story more believable, but you have no way of proving this was the case, and it is clear our best sources did believe he actually walked on water. You might just as well claim the event never happened at all and is just a legend - you cant prove that either, but it is just as believable (if not more).