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Cake day: August 14th, 2023

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  • Mystery religions were very popular in the 1st century Greek world and Christianity is essentially a Jewish mystery religion. ‘Mystery’ literally meaning ‘secret knowledge’. The story of Jesus telling a parable and then secretly telling the apostles that there is a hidden meaning is itself a parable with the author of the gospel saying that the entire gospel is filled with hidden meanings to be found.

    It’s terrible way to spread a message and inevitably ends with people inventing their own meanings and losing what the authors originally intended to convey.



  • The question of the historicity of Jesus does not deal with any of the supernatural claims. It attempts to answer how Christianity started from a historical perspective. It is a debate between a real but ordinary person; or a fictional creation, the angel Jesus, from which the apostles “received revelation” in much the same way as Joseph Smith did from Moroni, Mohammad from Gabriel, and many modern pastors do from Jesus.

    So, no, the virgin birth narrative is irrelevant to any historical Jesus. That was created decades after the beginning of Christianity as a response to the gospel of Mark saying Jesus was from Nazareth, but some readers and authors of the later gospels thought prophecy said the messiah would be from Bethlehem.