JC was not my homeboy

I have a million things on my brain right now, so I dont know where this will go, but...

Yesterday I listened to a talk by Richard Carrier who is a super smart guy, holds a PhD in History and is an expert in ancient science, or about how and when and where science took its first steps.  He talks about the historicity of Jesus and the events in the Bible.  I had thought, based on what I had read a few years ago, that there was some secular account of the birth, life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.  LIke a Roman execution warrant for a one Yessuah Christ, but no.  There is practically nothing, and what remains is a huge collection of documents written fifty years or later after Jesus allegedly died that explain what it was like to hang out with Him.  Of course they can't write about it, because Jesus died fifty years or more before they got around to writing it.  Its very involved and I dont have time to go into all of it, but it is truly fascinating.

The thing that gets me though is how the Book of Daniel is a forgery.  It was written around 300 bce when Daniel was trying to be a apocalyptic prophet and applied to the Greeks taking over and killing everyone around that time.  The book of Daniel is the one that talks about the prophesy of a son of God, that comes, gets sacrificed, and God does all the stuff mentioned in Revelation, all that scary end of the world demons humping your face stuff.  So they wanted to find the prophet to sacrifice the guy to start the end of the world and get up to heaven already... only Daniel didn't finish the book in time.  He failed.  New people took his book, recalculated his end of the world time tables and found out that the new messiah comes around the year that Jesus allegedly came.  This period of time in history is plagued with messiahs, they were all over the place.  The Romans, and Jews crucified (false) messiahs left and right.  Why was this place so plagued with Messiahs?  Because Daniel said the messiah would come at that time and start the end of the world.  Lots of people wanted to be that messiah and were willing to die for it, and many did.  Is it any surprise that one of those messiahs acquired a following after his death?  Taken this way Christianity doesn't seem any more real than a failed end of the world prophecy, which the evidence points to.

In my estimation, because of the power Religion has over people and policy and the minds of millions, people will be drawn to it and ask questions.  As science, archeology and the like improve we will be able to make new inferences about ancient civilizations, culture and creeds.  Because Christianity draws so much attention, it will be studied most.  And after years of study Christianity already seems very much like the rest of religions started in that area.  Not unique, or more true, but an equally unlikely hypothesis about the origin of the life of humans.  I look forward to future years when we know more than we do now, not because religion will be undone, but because the mystery will be revealed, and we will know.  A revelation much deserved and eagerly awaited.