Did Jesus exist, Part II

Or whether one believes the evidence and that it substantiates the historicity of Jesus. I was being a bit rhetorical for effect in my statement, but I was thinking along these lines. Mormons for example, and I could have taken Catholics, Baptists, Jews, etc will live their family and church lives the way they do and be generally happy with them whether or not there was ever an angel Moroni doing what Joseph Smith said. So it doesn't matter for a good Mormon whether or not there ever was an angel named Moroni, it's their belief in that angel that determines there satisfaction with their faith, among other important variables, of course. This is just an example case strictly for the purpose of illustrating my meaning.lfen

Meister Eckert said similiar things but I can't find any copies of his sermons on the web and don't have any of his books here. There may have been some other Christian contemplatives who wrote about the experiencing of God beyond words and concepts but I'm not as familiar with them as I am eastern sages.lfen

Faith,That works. Thank you. I had some kind of memory drift.
Thank you for the other links as well.lfen

Well, the Catholic authorities considered him so, but not all do. This gets at my bitterest criticism of Chritianity and the basis for my rejection of it. It is a bottom up religion that imposes a ceiling that preserves the ego. Anyone who realizes beyond that is declared heretical.Though I'm not a Buddhist, my advocacy of Buddhism is that it is a top down religon. The Buddha began with awakening and taught the non dual and then a religion was created for the those who lived the ego as reality. That was compassionate but didn't attempt to prevent awakening.I suspect that this ceiling was cemented in place as a result of Constantine making Christianity the state religion. Probably the only parts of the Christian religion that impress me are heretical, or at least tend to what the authorities regard as heretical.Thanks for the information on Eckhart(Eckhardt)!lfen

No I'm not using "ego" in the vernacular sense of pride. I'm using it to mean our conscious sense of being a separate individual existence. That I understand is the teaching. But that is a gloss on the answer to "who are you". You aren't what you appear to yourself to be. This can be demonstrated, examined, analysed from many approaches ancient and modern, eastern and western. Our selves are social psychological glosses on a complex functioning.I haven't examined this question of why Eckhart was branded heretical, but from my reading of Bernadette Roberts I think that his statement of realization of the fundamental nature of consciousness as singlular did discomfort the "egos" of the church who hold that God and man are separate which is based on the
ego's need to believe that it is something separate with out examining how transitory and utterly dependent the phenomena of a human organism/self is.Also I think the church authorities rightly realized that Eckhardt's teachings could undermine their control of believers as it moved authority from social church hierarchy and moved it to the awakened consciousness.lfen

Faith,I'll try to do a bit more research in Eckardt myself. I found his language rather dense and Judeo Christian but found the "gist" as I could understand it to reflect the understanding of what in the East is called Awakening.My hypothese is that Awakening is something that occurs regardless of culture but that communicating about it cultural means must be used so the language and even concepts that are used to talk about it vary widely given the distribution in time and space.lfen

But JAR is alive and posting responses on this forum. The relationship of the Gospels to the teachings of Jesus is not as well established as say Plato's dialogues to the teachings of Socrates and yet there is still a lot of room for questioning the difference between what Socrates believed and taught and how Plato interpreted it.I haven't paid attention to the Jesus seminar. Don't know if I would agree with them or not but people have the right to form seminar's and discuss ideas just as we are doing now as well as the right to disregard them, just as billions don't bother reading EvC.lfen

Buz,They are evidence of something but of what? Paul's Christ was overwelmingly mystical. Dying for beliefs doesn't mean there was a historical person, only a belief in a God man.There might have been an actual person whose life inspired the religion. That much is plausible. But what independent historical evidence do we have for him? People were believing all kinds of things in those days, much as they do in these days, come to think of it. Believing extrordinary stuff is pretty typical of people. What we are looking for and not finding is independent confirmation that a rabbi, a messiah candidate lived and was killed by the Romans. That much is plausible but the evidence is very little and of dubious quality.Later on there was lots of believers in the Gospels and the whole story taught by the church, but a historical argument requires evidence that is contemporary or from his lifetime. Jar is saying that is not very good. What you are left with is what the Church has always claimed that it is by faith. I don't think Jar is resorting to dodges. There really is almost no evidence and the Josepheus cites are contaminated if not wholey the result of later additions.Someday evidence may turn up. It's not likely but it could happen.lfen