Friday, June 22, 2012

A Bit of an Overreaction?

Why is it that mythicists who question the existence of the historical Jesus are so often compared to creationists or Holocaust deniers? Creationists deny the foundations of biology.  Holocaust deniers seek to undermine our understanding of one of the most profound events of the 20th century.  Mythicists, on the other hand, merely suggest the possibility that a heavily mythologized 1st century Palestinian peasant may in fact have been completely mythologized.  Does raising that question really pose a similar challenge to our ability to understand the world around us?

In terms of the epistemological significance of the the issue, might not a better comparison be those people who question whether Shakespeare really wrote the plays that were attributed to him?

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