HE AQUÍ MI COMENTARIO:

YO NO CREO QUE SEA UN MITO LA BIBLIA....MMMM....LEYENDA TAL VEZ UN POQUITO, PERO MUY POQUITO EN ALGUNAS PARTES QUE CONFORMAN LO QUE ES EL NUEVO TESTAMENTO.

POR EJEMPLO:

TODOS SABEMOS QUE LOS AUTORES DEL NUEVO TESTAMENTO (EN LA PARTE DONDE SE HABLA DE LA ENCARNACIÓN Y NACIMIENTO DE JESUS, SU BAUTIZO, SUS PREDICACIONES Y MILAGROS REALIZADOS, SU PASIÓN Y MUERTE, Y SU RESURRECCIÓN AL 3° DÍA....) SON: SAN MATEO, SAN LUCAS, SAN JUAN.

SIN EMBARGO HAY ACTOS QUE NO MENCIONAN LOS 3...O BIEN LOS DESCRIBEN DE MANERA DIFERENTE; EJEMPLO:

UNO DESCRIBE QUE UN DÍA QUE JESUS IBA EN CAMINO CON SUS DISCÍPULOS POR LAS CALLES, UNA MUJER QUE PADECÍA UNA HEMORRAGIA: SE LE ACERCO POR DETRÁS Y LE TOCO EL FLECO DEL MANTO. AL INSTANTE ELLA QUEDO SANA; JESUS SE DIO LA VUELTA Y LE DIJO: "ANIMO, TU FE TE HA SALVADO".

PERO OTRO AUTOR MENCIONA QUE JESUS AL VOLVERSE PREGUNTÓ: "¿QUIEN ME HA TOCADO?", SUS DISCÍPULOS LE RESPONDIERON: "SEÑOR ES LA MULTITUD QUIEN TE EMPUJA". EL RESTO YA LO SABEN USTEDES.

Y ES AHÍ EN DONDE ENTRA LA DUDA A CUALQUIER SIMPLE LECTOR QUE LEE O ESTUDIA LA BIBLIA DE VEZ EN CUANDO.

ADEMAS HAY INFINIDAD DE NARRACIONES DE SUCESOS QUE SABE DIOS QUIEN LOS EMPEZÓ A PROPAGAR. ESTA POR EJEMPLO UNO, QUE DICE QUE LOS SOLDADOS ROMANOS IBAN PERSIGUIENDO A MARÍA (CON EL NIÑO JESUS OCULTO ENTRE EL MANTO DE SU PECHO) Y JOSÉ, LES DIERON ALCANCE Y LE OBLIGARON A MARÍA A DESCUBRIRSE EL MANTO DEL PECHO, Y EN LUGAR DEL NIÑO JESUS SOLO HALLARON UN RAMO DE FLORES....

ES POSIBLE, OPINO Y PIENSO YO QUE ES POSIBLEMENTE QUE POR ESAS LEYENDAS LOS ATEOS Y OTRAS PERSONAS CON DIFERENTE RELIGIÓN O CREENCIA PIENSEN QUE LA BIBLIA SEA UN MITO.

POR MI PARTE YO ME QUEDO CON LA IDEA QUE LA BIBLIA ES LA NARRACIÓN DE SUCESOS Y HECHOS RELIGIOSOS--QUE RELACIONADOS CON EL DIOS YAVÉ, LA SAGRADA FAMILIA Y TODOS LOS SANTOS--LOS CUALES AL PASO DE TODOS LOS TIEMPOS LAS DIVERSAS Y VARIADAS GENERACIONES HUMANAS (POR SU PROPIA CUENTA) LOS HAN IDO CONVIRTIENDO EN: "LEYENDA". HE DICHO.

I think this is a great demonstration of why people shouldn't be left to determine what is to be believed about God. God must show people what is to be believed about God.

I think the burden is on the skeptic (sorry, Bob!) to demonstrate why we should consider the textual-changes hypothesis to be very likely.

Christian, yes that is true if we wanted you to believe it. However, if you believe that the text is true because a supernatural power makes it true, no evidence is going to make any difference. You are entitled to believe it, and it is fine with me if you do. However, we who do not believe, look first for a natural explanation. The burden is upon anyone else to present evidence to us that something beyond Nature is going on.

Further, if Christian scribes were in the practice of revising the Gospel manuscripts, we should expect them to have ironed out some of the apparent difficulties which arise in comparing the different Gospel accounts, but they didn't.

Yes, they did, and we have no idea how much. Listen to what we do know about from Biblical Scholar, Bart Ehrman

The hero story pops up in all cultures. In this one, the hero suffers and sacrifices himself to save the entire human race who are suffering because of The Fall. It is deeply psychological. Something was needed when the expected characteristics of the Messiah (leading the expulsion of the Romans) did not materialize.

I am completely convinced that Saul (Paul) was a true believer. That does not mean that what he believed was any more true than the Islam that many people have given their lives for, or that that Emperor of Japan was divine just because suicide warriors were willing to die for his honor. I suspect Saul had a stroke or epileptic seisure, and the temporal lobe of his brain synthesized a delusion which he interpreted as meeting with a ghost Jesus, and that experience changed his life. I can't prove that, but it is a natural explanation that is vastly more plausible than the supernatural alternative. I don't expect that to make any difference to you, but I have already explained that that is your business.

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Bob, you keep taking my argument further than I intend for it to go and addressing questions that I haven't. All I'm arguing presently is that St. Paul believed the Jesus story to have taken place in real, factual history. If you agree with that assertion, I don't feel compelled to pursue this particular conversation further. If you disagree with that assertion, I'm interested in hearing your reason for disagreement.

Instead of addressing the question which I've been addressing- "of what nature were St. Paul's beliefs about Jesus?"- you tried to answer a different question, "for what reason(s) might St. Paul have held his beliefs?" Your answer is one which could satisfy the question, and it's certainly worth further discussion. However, that's not a discussion I've tried to engage, and it's not one which I intend to engage presently.

As I said in my most recent comment, "Whether or not those beliefs correspond to actual historical facts is a separate issue." I understand your inclination toward addressing the issue, but I've not tried to do so at any time in this conversation, and I don't intend to do so now. I'm simply interested in whether or not you agree with my assertion that "St. Paul believed the Jesus story to have taken place in real, factual history."

Christian:

[Paul’s] persistence would have made no sense
had he not believed that (what he knew of) the Jesus story was rooted in historical facts.

OK. He heard a legend, and he believed it. Again: what’s left
unexplained?

I should've clarified that his specific kind of devotion, especially in light of his particular circumstance, indicated a devotion to a belief in historical facts. The kind of devotion displayed by pagan clerics of the day is qualitatively different, and I think that the specific circumstances invalidate any attempt to meaningfully parallel the two.

He believed a legend. What is left unexplained?

Again, I was discrediting the idea of parallel pagan-Paul devotion. His persistence would have made no sense had he not believed that (what he knew of) the Jesus story was rooted in historical facts. Whether or not those beliefs correspond to actual historical facts is a separate issue.

Christian:

You said that Paul wouldn’t devote his life to things that he believed were a-historical. I responded that others did. Sounds like we’re in agreement. My point is that someone devoting his life on non-historical (but mythical, perhaps) things isn’t unheard of.

His persistence through persecution makes it even more bizarre.

He believed a legend. What is left unexplained?

My point is that it makes no sense to put St. Paul's beliefs in the same category as pagan beliefs, such as those held in the Cult of Dionysus. When I said that St. Paul's devotion indicated the historical nature of his beliefs, you suggested that some people, such as the contemporary pagans, devoted their own lives to things which they believed to be "mytholically true but not historically true."

I think that the qualitative effects of each kind of belief disqualify any attempt to portray them as parallel. Devoting oneself to pagan beliefs was socially acceptable and beneficial; being a Christian was quite the opposite. Being a priest in the Cult of Dionysus would get one laid. Being the "slave of Jesus Christ" got St. Paul thrown in prison. If St. Paul wanted, like a contemporary pagan priest, to devote his life to a mythological-but-not-historical belief, his particular choice of belief makes little sense. His persistence through persecution makes it even more bizarre.

Hey Q., thanks for clarifying your thoughts. I'll briefly respond to a few thoughts from your last comment:

Again, we don't know what changes were made to the texts during this period. My whole point was that the canonical gospels were written long after the life of Jesus (I think there probably was a life of Jesus) so as to be what Joseph Campbell describes as a hero's journey.

I think the burden is on the skeptic (sorry, Bob!) to demonstrate why we should consider the textual-changes hypothesis to be very likely. If these were believed to be sacred texts (or at least texts pertaining very closely to the sacred God-Man Jesus Christ), I consider it unlikely that fudging would've been allowed, let alone practiced. Further, if Christian scribes were in the practice of revising the Gospel manuscripts, we should expect them to have ironed out some of the apparent difficulties which arise in comparing the different Gospel accounts, but they didn't. I think there are much better reasons supporting the texts-weren't-changed hypothesis than the texts-were-changed hypothesis, and it sounds like you're placing your bet on the latter.

As I noted in my response above to Ateo, the Campbell "hero type" only lines up with the Jesus story on 2 of 7 significant points. Your'e free to contest my arguments from up there, but I think they're pretty solid. If Christians had revised the written accounts of the Jesus story in order to make Jesus more like Campbell's "hero type", they did an extraordinarily poor job of it.

Plus, the two points on which Campbell's mono-myth and the Jesus story match ("overcome great evil" and "to save his people") are substantially present (Aquinas humor!) in the letters of St. Paul, which you'd probably agree emerged within a few decades of Jesus' time on earth. The Jesus story's only significant comparisons to Campbell's mono-myth go back to the (probably) earliest written materials regarding the Jesus story. If Christians changed the life story of a historical Jesus in order to better match it to Campbell's myth, it must have been very early (before St. Paul's letters) and very poorly-done.

In short, your assertion that "the Jesus story was changed to match the the heroic mono-myth" doesn't hold up very well. It's highly implausible on several counts.

Did he ever read the canonical gospels? Probably not the writings that did not happen until after his death.

When I said "a couple nice stories", I meant the parts of the Jesus story with which St. Paul was clearly familiar. Even assuming that the Gospels weren't written until after St. Paul's death (which is a contestable hypothesis), they're irrelevant to the facts that Paul was clearly familiar with the most essential parts of the Jesus story and that he proliferated them with great toil. My assertion, which I think still stands, is that St. Paul's toils and writings indicate that he believed the Jesus story (or at least what he knew of it) to be historical fact and not a-historical theological musings. It wouldn't make sense for him to put such labor into evangelizing if he believed that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection were "just a couple nice stories" which didn't relate to factual history.

Christian:

If you were a priest in, say, the Cult of Dionysus

Such a priest would think that Dionysus really was reborn, but he wouldn’t place it in history. It would be “long ago.” This is a mythological context.

Who goes around getting himself or herself thrown in prison for kicks and giggles?

Who crashes planes into buildings for kicks and giggles? No one is suggesting that Paul didn’t believe something or it was a hoax.

Early Christians, on the other hand, got into a lot of trouble for their own beliefs

Sure—but so what? You can’t be suggesting that Christianity was the only persecuted minority religion.

If St. Paul was myth-making in the tradition of the Greco-Roman gods

Again, no one is suggesting a deliberate fiction. A legend, on the other hand, is what I’m suggesting.

As for your list of options, there’s an important difference between myth (“long ago and far away”) and legend (“my cousin Vinnie has it on good authority that …”). Legend is more about people than gods (myth is vice versa) and is grounded in our history (“in the time of Caesar Augustus,” say).

“Legend” is the bin in which to place the gospels, IMO. As I mentioned earlier, I think that the claim that the gospels were intended to be history (or initially read as such) is debatable, but I don’t have the data to clarify that position.