Ian,
Why would Jesus' physical body have medical issues of the era, yet the figure be capable of healing any and every affliction placed in front of him without much effort at all, including raising others from death?
One would have to produce some exotic excuses. ...
It's curious you'd mention that, JaysonR, because in our own days we have a miracle worker who died of being mortal, yet his followers continue to believe in his special, special attributes.
I refer to Sathya Sai Baba
WPof course.
I've known a number of people who believed him to be a saviour of mankind and their beliefs didn't diminish after his death.
"After nearly a month of hospitalisation, during which his condition progressively deteriorated, Sai Baba died on Sunday, 24 April at 7:40 IST, aged 84.[52]
Sai Baba had predicted that he would die at age 96 and would remain healthy until then.[53] After he died, some devotees suggested that he might have been referring to that many lunar years, which is followed by Telugu-speaking Hindus, rather than solar years,[54] and using the Indian way of accounting for age, which counts the year to come as part of the person's life.[55] Other devotees have spoken of his anticipated resurrection, reincarnation or awakening.[56][57]"
pakeha,
True, but notice how we have to cherry pick and stitch a large diversity of select parts from other stories to pull together a comparison, and in even doing so the function of that stitching doesn't net the same result as the Jesus stories?
Further, most of the comparisons that were being made in that blog were very gross comparisons and not very accurate in a specific sense.
For instance, Wanderings and Signs is incredibly vague (the description used) and does not describe the nature of the way those accounts are told very specifically; only that such basic concept as this existed.
The stories, while clearly not a chronicle, are distinct in their fashion and produced a new genre (which sadly did not end up being used to tell the stories of other figures; it would have been interesting if it had provoked more than one tale).
Of course you're right- you can't stitch together elements from those stories to make up the Jesus narratives, but I don't think that's the point of considering the accounts of Jesus' life as part of the literary world of that time.
I reckon the point is that those elements were present, could be identified by the audiences who listened to the people who spun those stories.
This is, I think, a legitimate way to see the Jesus narratives, as being very much a literary product of the Roman Empire post70.
The stories, while clearly not a chronicle, are distinct in their fashion and produced a new genre (which sadly did not end up being used to tell the stories of other figures; it would have been interesting if it had provoked more than one tale)
To my way of thinking, they did and we call this
genre hagiography.
