Pretty much all mainstream historians recognize the real existence of Jesus the man; whether you believe he was the divine son of Jehovah is, of course, quite another matter. I'd recommend taking a look at the Jesus Seminar's Five Gospels, however, before according equal credibility to all statements attributed to Jesus the historical religious reformer/leader/nut (as you prefer). They're a group of Biblical scholars (certainly NOT fundamentalists), and they have a very nice system of color-coding utterances attributed to Jesus according to whether it was almost certainly something he said, something he probably said something like, probably not something he said, or definitely not anything he ever said (see: entire Gospel of John).
The book also includes the Gospel of Thomas, which is Gnostic in character and certainly a different perspective on early Christianity and its portrayals of Jesus. It features Jesus bringing clay birds to life and striking some guy dead for bumping into him on the street, which rather overshadows your canonical examples of violent Christ behavior. :p
I was not raised Christian and, in fact, grew up in Rush Limbaugh's home town, where not being Christian was heavily sanctioned by my peer group; ironically, this aroused in me an interest in the history and philosophy of Christianity. Personally, I'm pretty okay with Jesus; having met my share of crazy pagans, I feel that there is pretty much no doctrine/teaching/whathaveyou that a determined idiot cannot twist to suit their own desires.
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Date: 2005-04-13 01:43 pm (UTC)The book also includes the Gospel of Thomas, which is Gnostic in character and certainly a different perspective on early Christianity and its portrayals of Jesus. It features Jesus bringing clay birds to life and striking some guy dead for bumping into him on the street, which rather overshadows your canonical examples of violent Christ behavior. :p
I was not raised Christian and, in fact, grew up in Rush Limbaugh's home town, where not being Christian was heavily sanctioned by my peer group; ironically, this aroused in me an interest in the history and philosophy of Christianity. Personally, I'm pretty okay with Jesus; having met my share of crazy pagans, I feel that there is pretty much no doctrine/teaching/whathaveyou that a determined idiot cannot twist to suit their own desires.