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I would be surprised that amongst historians that there is any real dispute of the existance,
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There has been in the past, although at the present these people are a small minority (even though now new evidence has become available). But their reasoning for the historicity is largely conjecture and their points can be explained just as easily by considering the Jesus story as a collection of oral histories and the many "messiahs" and holy men of the age. The independent historical accounts are very flimsy - a few mentions decades or a century later, derived wholly from Christian sources who copied the original works many times, and one of which is almost certainly a forgery in the eyes of historians.
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Is your supposition that the disciples simply made up the resurrection?
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Not at all. See my story below. There are so many scenarios where people believe unreasonable things, especially those that have invested their life and their neck in the truth of something. This happens even in these modern times. I think people also greatly underestimate human stupidity and their ability to genuinely believe all kinds of unsupported notions. The Age of Enlightenment has only been on us a couple of hundred years. And I linked the Sai Baba earlier - he's a very instructive read for the kind of topics you bring up in the OP.
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With respect to the monks you describe, they are trained and taught and indoctrinated to become what they become. My impression is that historically, Jesus followers took his teaching and were inspired. It really doesn't seem quite the same thing.
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Fair point. But I'm sure you can find modern analogues - the Sai Baba in India or any number of faith healers in Mexico are excellent examples of this phenomena in even an educated populace. If you haven't had the opportunity to see this with your own eyes, it's worth doing [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
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I would be interested in the piece you wrote.
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Here it is. It's a bit touchy feely as it's written to someone who thinks the only possibilities are that Jesus was resurrected or that it was the greatest fraud in history.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1