George Aligator

Nov 12 2017, 12:59 PM

There is a rapidly growing consensus that the Jesus of faith is not an historical figure. The academic debate now centers on whether there was some obscure Galilean rabbi about whom various myths and miracle stories were attached or whether, in fact, there never was any such grain of sand at the center of the Christian pearl. As the connections between Biblical and non-Jewish religious material becomes better known from archeological evidence, the latter view is gaining weight.

However, it is bad scholarship as well as bad manners to assume that myth is bullsh*t simply because it is not historical fact. History may be likened to a photograph of a person while myth is a sort of x-ray. All the material which the Bible shares with other religions has much to tell us about the human past and the human mind. The line dividing history and myth is indeed of critical importance; however, it divides two valuable epistemologies, it does not divide truth and nonsense.