Historical Jesus

[HansMustermann]

But really, the best illustration of how life was NOT that cheap, comes again from Pliny. Even when dealing with people who were
A) slaves (you could only use torture when interrogating a slave,) AND
B) members of an illegal religious organization,
his instructions were NOT to just nail them and be done with it.

In fact, if you look at it, even in those conditions, you had to be pretty damn determined to get nailed for Jesus to actually make the cut.

 

[dejudge]

There are many people who believe that Trump is a great president and yet Trump exists.

To accuse someone of having no idea you have to get some idea. Gnothi seauton.

There are many who believe God is great yet God doesn't exist.

 

[dejudge]

Well, yeah. Duh. I don't think anybody in this thread is arguing against that.

But there was a historical Jesus.

Reconcile. Reconcile. Make an attempt to Reconcile.

But there was no historical Jesus. Everything written about Jesus, the disciples and Paul are total fiction in and out the NT. In addition, numerous writings were forged or falsely attributed to fictitious character and manipulated in attempt to historicise them.

 

[dejudge]

But myths and legends and fantastical stories nevertheless had origins and motivation. With the Jesus story it was the yearning for the Messiah to overcome the evil Romans.

So what was the motivation for Greeks and Romans to worship a vast amount of myth Gods like Jupiter, Pluto, Venus, Chronos, Zeus, and others?

What was the motivation for Joseph Smith to start a new religion claiming he got information from an angel?

It is clear a religion can be initiated on complete fiction.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the Jesus story was started because of a yearning for a Messiah to overcome the evil Romans in the time of Pilate and before the War of the Jews.

The Jews expected their Messianic rulers around c 66-70 CE based on Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius.

If Jesus did live and was crucified he would have been a complete failure and not be regarded as a Jewish Messiah.

These magical stories did not arise in a vacuum; it’s interesting to try and understand why they did arise.

1.Are you claiming that the story where Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin did not arise from a vacuum?

2. Are you claiming that the story of the holy ghost bird and the baptism of Jesus did not arise from a vacuum?

3.Are you claiming that the temptation story with Jesus and the devil on the pinnacle of the Temple did not arise from a vacuum?

4. Are you claiming that the story of feeding thousands of people with a few loaves of bread and fish did not arise from a vacuum?

5. Are you claiming that the story where Jesus walked on water for miles did not arise from a vacuum?

6. Are you claiming that the story where Jesus transfigured in the presence of his disciples did not arise from a vacuum?

7. Are you claiming that the story where Jesus resurrected did not arise from a vacuum?

8. Are you claiming that the story where the resurrected Jesus visited the disciples did not arise from a vacuum?

9. Are you claiming that the story where the resurrected Jesus ate and cooked food in the presence of his disciples did not arise from a vacuum?

10. Are you claiming that the story where the resurrected Jesus ascended in a cloud in the presence of his disciples did not arise from a vacuum?

It is clear the Jesus fables were completely fabricated in a vacuum.

Just trying to understand WHY the authors of the bible did what they did.

It can be easily seen that the Jesus stories were complete implausible fiction so it is hardly likely that a person would invent those stories contemporaneously.

If Jesus did live and was crucified people in the Roman Empire, especially those who knew him, would have known the Jesus stories were complete nonsense.

If Jesus did live and was crucified he died like a dog.

Who in the Roman Empire, which Roman Emperor, would worship a known "dog" a a God?

Why would they want to make people “believe” if they themselves didn’t believe – no matter how misguidedly?

The very first thing that you must understand is that all the NT authors are unknown. We have no idea who really wrote them and what they actually believed.

It was the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE which caused people to make up conspiracy theories for why it happened.

The Jesus stories were some of those conspiracy theories which later became the beliefs of Christian cults.

Examine Hippolytus Expository Treatise Against the Jews

7. But why, O prophet, tell us, and for what reason, was the temple made desolate? Was it on account of that ancient fabrication of the calf? Was it on account of the idolatry of the people? Was it for the blood of the prophets? Was it for the adultery and fornication of Israel? By no means, he says; for in all these transgressions they always found pardon open to them, and benignity; but it was because they killed the Son of their Benefactor, for He is coeternal with the Father

According to biblical scholars what we have are narratives set down 20-70 years after Jesus died by believers, which are largely dependent on tradition and hearsay. And that “tradition and hearsay” included crucifixion. There is no good reason to not accept in broad-brush terms such consistent references to a crucifixion. It wouldn’t have been unusual – it’s what Romans did to dissidents and life was cheap.

Please, just show me the historical evidence that was used to corroborate the life and death of NT Jesus.

I do not accept what plenty people say especially when they never ever present evidence.

Which non-apologetic writer made a single reference to Jesus, the disciples and Paul?

Jesus, the disciples and Paul were supposedly introducing a new religion in the Roman Empire where Jews should abolish their sacrifice of animals and worship a known crucified man as a God yet nobody at all wrote about this new phenomenon.

There was no tradition or hearsay regarding Jesus, the disciples and Paul before the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE.

 

[HansMustermann]

I'm even ok with pushing it to after 70 -- in fact, it does have its merits -- but it still doesn't explain why they'd make up Paul. The general pattern for all cults that we know of is that, yeah, sure, they make up their deities and angels and demigods, but nobody ever seems to have made up the founder of a church. E.g., sure, you see Muhammad making up Archangel Gabriel giving him the message, or Joseph Smith making up the angel Moroni doing much the same for him, but neither of them try to invent a predecessor who got the message before them.

It's not clear why you'd even want to do that, instead of taking the credit and living the good life. Being the prophet gives you auctoritas, which was important in the ancient world, plus power and material advantages, so if in you're that position, why would you say, "nah, it wasn't me"?

Plus, it's not even clear how would you go about faking that. So you're the first guy who goes to, say, Corinth and converts a few people. How would you even go about telling them that, nah, there's been a Xian church in Corinth for 50 years, they just can't meet any of the members except you?


Plus, you still didn't address the issue of: why the heck was Paul's name that important in the first place? Again, to be worth putting on a fake letter instead of your own name, it had to carry more authority than your own name in the first place.

So in the traditional narrative we know why whoever put Timothy and Paul's names on those epistles did that. Because people already knew the names of Paul and Timothy from the other epistles, and they carried a lot of authority. So saying it's Paul's letter to Timothy gave it a lot more authority than saying it's Larry's letter to Moe.

But if you're going to claim that for all epistles, from the first one (whichever that may be in your variant of the story), then who the heck IS this Paul character, and how and when did he get any claim to authority?

And it's not just that you're lacking an explanation there, it's that now you've multiplied the entities involved without explaining anything extra.

 

[dejudge]

I'm even ok with pushing it to after 70 -- in fact, it does have its merits -- but it still doesn't explain why they'd make up Paul. The general pattern for all cults that we know of is that, yeah, sure, they make up their deities and angels and demigods, but nobody ever seems to have made up the founder of a church. E.g., sure, you see Muhammad making up Archangel Gabriel giving him the message, or Joseph Smith making up the angel Moroni doing much the same for him, but neither of them try to invent a predecessor who got the message before them.

What total nonsense!! The NT itself contains multiple made up characters, fabricated converts and churches.

Since NT authors fabricated their own God Jesus it would not take much to invent their disciples and Paul.

Jesus cult believers were called Christians because they were believers in Christ - not Paul.

So in the traditional narrative we know why whoever put Timothy and Paul's names on those epistles did that. Because people already knew the names of Paul and Timothy from the other epistles, and they carried a lot of authority. So saying it's Paul's letter to Timothy gave it a lot more authority than saying it's Larry's letter to Moe.

Your assertion is baseless. You have no evidence whatsoever that either Paul or Timothy did live and no evidence whatsoever that anyone at anytime knew actual persons named Paul and Timothy.

Not even the resurrected Jesus knew anyone named Paul in Acts of the Apostles.

But if you're going to claim that for all epistles, from the first one (whichever that may be in your variant of the story), then who the heck IS this Paul character, and how and when did he get any claim to authority?

The Epistles under the name of Paul were not known in the Churches up to the mid 2nd century.

It was the Memoirs of the apostles, called Gospels, that were read in the Churches.
Justin's First Apology.

And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits..

Who the heck and was Paul and what authority did he ever have anywhere or anytime?

The Pauline Epistles were produced in a vacuum. No Church anywhere ever read them before c 70 CE.

 

[David Mo]

There are many who believe God is great yet God doesn't exist.

I'm sorry, but you reversed the sense of the parallelism that I made.
Although explaining an irony isn't funny, I'm going to explain it to you.


Some followers of Trump attributed special powers to him that he doesn't have.
Some followers of Jesus the Galilean attributed to him special powers he didn't have.
That doesn't mean that Trump doesn't exist, but that there are some very "imaginative" followers of him.
That does not mean that Jesus the Galilean did not exist, but that he had very imaginative followers.

My joke was to laugh a little at President Trump.

I hope you got that now.

 

[Tassman]

Yes, but my point is that he's a different guy from the kung-fu necromancer in my dream. If I started a cult of that kung-fu necromancer and how he can give you eternal life because he's a lich king, and in the year 4000 all you had that mentioned Dwayne Johnson was that, you couldn't really reconstruct anything about him from that. You know, like people from bible studies want to reconstruct a "historical Jesus".

Trying to go, "oh yeah, the historical Dwayne Johnson must have been a cult leader" just because that's what my dream makes him, would be fundamentally flawed. Yet the same kind of reasoning is presented as perfectly valid when it's about Jesus.

Dreams (or epileptic visions in the case of Paul) are muddled affairs with a mixture of remembered facts and fantastical ideation that makes no logical sense in retrospect. In your dream the “remembered fact” is the reality of Dwayne Johnson’s existence and the sort of action movie he in which he often specializes.

With Paul (in a more gullible era) his “remembered facts” are what he knew of Jesus’ followers making a nuisance of themselves in Jerusalem by talking about Jesus still being alive and what he made of it all during his seizure and apparent divine revelation.

But basically here's an easier example that I keep using. We know that the Mad Arab Abdul Al Hazred is based on Lovecraft's mom's maiden name, "Hazard". And is most likely inspired by her.

It’s a false comparison. Lovecraft himself acknowledged that the Necronomicon was all his own invention. Whereas Paul claims divine inspiration and basis in fact. Different concepts of historical truth - different strokes for different folks. Especially in Paul’s era of wonders and miracles.

 

[Tassman]

So what was the motivation for Greeks and Romans to worship a vast amount of myth Gods like Jupiter, Pluto, Venus, Chronos, Zeus, and others?

In most cases the pagan gods were nonscientific explanations of why things happened in nature. E.g. in the absence of knowledge about electrostatic discharge, thunder and lightning must be caused by a pissed off god of lightning. Where else would it come from?

What was the motivation for Joseph Smith to start a new religion claiming he got information from an angel?

Jo Smith had a history of being a charlatan, if not actively delusional – or both. A regular Donald Trump type.

It is clear a religion can be initiated on complete fiction.

Only in your own mind.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the Jesus story was started because of a yearning for a Messiah to overcome the evil Romans in the time of Pilate and before the War of the Jews.

The Jews expected their Messianic rulers around c 66-70 CE based on Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius.

In Jewish eschatology, the Messiah is a future Jewish king from the Davidic line. There was no particular timeline – just as Evangelicals expect Jesus coming on a cloud of glory when times get tough.

1.Are you claiming that the story where Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin did not arise from a vacuum?

Yes. The origins of the virgin birth story did not arise from a vacuum. Instances of gods being born of virgins was commonplace in pagan mythology. Similar with all your other examples which I’ve snipped.

It can be easily seen that the Jesus stories were complete implausible fiction so it is hardly likely that a person would invent those stories contemporaneously.

In a gullible era of myths and magic “complete implausible fiction” was frequently believed, e.g. Apollonius of Tyana lived at the same time and place as Jesus and he too was said to perform wonders and miracles. Such figures were a dime-a-dozen back then.

The very first thing that you must understand is that all the NT authors are unknown. We have no idea who really wrote them and what they actually believed.

It is pretty obvious that they believed the nonsense they wrote in the gospels regardless of who they were.

It was the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE which caused people to make up conspiracy theories for why it happened.

Incorrect. The (7 authentic) Pauline letters were written in the 50’s according to most biblical scholars, including atheistic scholars such as Bart Ehrman

 

[dejudge]

I'm sorry, but you reversed the sense of the parallelism that I made.
Although explaining an irony isn't funny, I'm going to explain it to you.


Some followers of Trump attributed special powers to him that he doesn't have.
Some followers of Jesus the Galilean attributed to him special powers he didn't have.
That doesn't mean that Trump doesn't exist, but that there are some very "imaginative" followers of him.
That does not mean that Jesus the Galilean did not exist, but that he had very imaginative followers.

My joke was to laugh a little at President Trump.

Again, your comparisons between Trump and Jesus are quite illogical.

Trump is a universally known figure of history who actually exist right now. Any false claim made about Trump is irrelevant since his birth and life
are documented.

Jesus the Galilean is found only in fiction, forgeries or falsely attributed writings and his birth and death are without historical corroboration by any independent source.

All you have done is to imagine your Jesus existed and then assume your imagination is historical evidence for his followers.

How ridiculously illogical can you be?

What you imagine about your Jesus is useless as evidence!!

 

[Reformed Offlian]

So what was the motivation for Greeks and Romans to worship a vast amount of myth Gods like Jupiter, Pluto, Venus, Chronos, Zeus, and others?

What was the motivation for Joseph Smith to start a new religion claiming he got information from an angel?

Presumably, the same motivation as any prophet: self-aggrandizement. But this counter-question isn't apposite. A better analogy would be: what motivation would Martin Harris have had for making up Joseph Smith? Or: what motivation did David Miscavige have for making up L. Ron Hubbard?

Making up a third party and giving him all the glory defeats the whole purpose of claiming divine revelation.

It is clear a religion can be initiated on complete fiction.

That's true. But that doesn't make it reasonable to suggest that Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard never existed.

There is a clear benefit to the claimant to profess being in possession of divine revelation. There is also a benefit to attributing such revelation to somebody the audience already knows and esteems. There is *no* benefit AFAICT to making up some dude the audience has never heard of and giving him all the glory.

 

[David Mo]

All you have done is to imagine your Jesus existed and then assume your imagination is historical evidence for his followers.

How ridiculously illogical can you be?

What you imagine about your Jesus is useless as evidence!!

Oh, my god!

 

[HansMustermann]

It’s a false comparison. Lovecraft himself acknowledged that the Necronomicon was all his own invention. Whereas Paul claims divine inspiration and basis in fact. Different concepts of historical truth - different strokes for different folks. Especially in Paul’s era of wonders and miracles.

Well, I'm not comparing the Necronomicon to the NT. If nothing else, the Necronomicon sounds more interesting

I'm just asking: exactly how different can the person X that inspired the character Y be from that character, for you to still claim that X is the historical Y?

Would you be ok with calling Lovecraft's mum "the historical Abdul Alhazred"?

If yes, then sure, under those lax standards I will concede that there might well have been a "historical Jesus" that resembles the Bible one as much as Lovecraft's mum resembles the Mad Arab. Several, probably.

If no, that's too different to count as talking about the same person, then, well, you now know my problem with a "historical Jesus".

 

[HansMustermann]

That's true. But that doesn't make it reasonable to suggest that Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard never existed.

There is a clear benefit to the claimant to profess being in possession of divine revelation. There is also a benefit to attributing such revelation to somebody the audience already knows and esteems. There is *no* benefit AFAICT to making up some dude the audience has never heard of and giving him all the glory.

And that's pretty much my problem with it.

I mean, the timeline proposed for the Paul conspiracy (as far as I can gather when none is presented no matter how often I ask) is kinda like this: the Epistles would be after Acts, which in turn has to be after Luke (seein' as it's the continuation of it), which in turn has to be after Mark (since Luke copies wholesale from Mark.) So we're talking about it being at the very least several years after Mark, but possibly a decade or two.

But if that's the timeline, we have the problem that Mark had already made up Peter, among others, who were supposed to not only be first hand witnesses, but travelled with Jesus for a flippin' year at that point. And the author of Luke and Acts copied that character too, so it's not like he never heard of it. In fact, Luke makes Peter literally be the first apostle to actually check the empty tomb in Luke 24:12. (Though not the first human, as the women had beat him to it.)

Furthermore, if it also comes after Matthew (which it probably does), then we have Matthew 16:18 where Jesus says, "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Frankly, this Peter character has both the qualifications, and one hell of an endorsement.

So it's not very clear to me why in that setup someone would want to neither take the credit themselves, nor use Peter for extra authority, but decides to go the route of, as you say, "making up some dude the audience has never heard of and giving him all the glory."

Hell, it's not even clear why Acts would end up being what it is, namely being chiefly about Paul. Out of all the characters which would have been better witnesses, including Peter, the other apostles, even Jesus's family, if you have a story to tell about the founding of the church, why make up a guy who's not even a witness and make it about him? I mean, literally, the best witnesses you could possibly have, Jesus's own family, just disappear after page 1 of Acts. Peter makes some weak sauce appearances, then just disappears from the story too. Other pre-Paul Xians, like Stephen, pretty much just set the stage to introduce Paul. And then it's all about Paul.

If you were making up a story about a guy you should totally trust as your source for Xianity, why spend a whole book making up a non-witness like Paul? Why not stick to Peter or James or whatever?

 

[Delvo]

Because personal reform from wickedness to holiness is a higher priority in your theology than claim verification? (Of course, that depends on whether Paul's alleged reform is really harped on much or just mentioned as background a couple of times, which I don't know. These books are just intolerable reading.)

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, Acts makes him some kind of Judge Dredd before his conversion. I mean, apparently he even has some kind of papers that allow him to arrest people in other, hostile nations. And he can get people executed in Jerusalem, never mind that that would be illegal at that point. So, yeah, not very plausible.

Paul mentions a couple of times that he persecuted the church, but he doesn't go into details and apparently none of them really knew him, so you just have to ask yourself exactly how good at it was he. And again, at this point the Romans were the only ones who could actually give a death sentence, and we know that other more radical groups were not really cracked down on. Seems like delusions of self importance at best.

Beyond that, wham, he converts and that's it. In both.

Neither seems to play it up that much, to be honest. Paul himself (or whoever wrote the epistles) plays the "look how much I suffered for the church" card when he needs to justify anything, and occasionally he's right because he's the local church father, but that's about it. The fact that he reformed is not actually an argument for his being right in either.

 

[HansMustermann]

That said, if you want the repentant reformed guy archetype, thing is, Peter fits that bill too. He just flat out denies Jesus to save his own butt after JC is arrested. Three times, in fact. And pulls a couple of disobedient stunts before too. So, dunno, if you want someone who repents and is somehow more believable for it, we're pretty much still back at "why not use Peter?"

Plus, Mark has Jesus's own family say he's gone mad when he first goes off preaching. So again, the potential to repent and still have cred as first hand witnesses is there.

The various gospels also introduce other people who acted even worse against Jesus and repented. Like, Matthew has the flippin' centurion who executed Jesus suddenly proclaim "this really was the Son Of God!" How's that for an even more dramatic heel-turn-face? I mean, the guy wasn't just against the church in some nebulous way. It's the flippin' guy who executed Jesus. Bit hard to top that, I'd say.

 

[dejudge]

Presumably, the same motivation as any prophet: self-aggrandizement. But this counter-question isn't apposite. A better analogy would be: what motivation would Martin Harris have had for making up Joseph Smith? Or: what motivation did David Miscavige have for making up L. Ron Hubbard?

That is a far worse analogy!! Martin Harris did not make up Ron Hubbard.

Making up a third party and giving him all the glory defeats the whole purpose of claiming divine revelation.

Claiming a known crucified criminal, a false prophet and deceiver was God Creator makes no sense whatsoever.

The Jesus story would have been known to be stupid fiction if he actually lived and was publicly crucified and died like a dog in Jerusalem.

The Jesus story only appears to be believable if it was fabricated after the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE and far away from Judea.

That's true. But that doesn't make it reasonable to suggest that Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard never existed.

Who is arguing that Joseph Smith and L Ron Hubbard never existed?

There is a clear benefit to the claimant to profess being in possession of divine revelation. There is also a benefit to attributing such revelation to somebody the audience already knows and esteems. There is *no* benefit AFAICT to making up some dude the audience has never heard of and giving him all the glory.

So, based on your absurdity, Adam was not made up because it is claimed God spoke to him in the garden of Eden.

 

[HansMustermann]

That is a far worse analogy!! Martin Harris did not make up Ron Hubbard.

Which is exactly the POINT. Nobody seems to have ever made up the FOUNDER of a church, yet you claim that just for Paul that would happen. For no obvious reason, and no stated mechanism for how it could even work.

Claiming a known crucified criminal, a false prophet and deceiver was God Creator makes no sense whatsoever.

The Jesus story would have been known to be stupid fiction if he actually lived and was publicly crucified and died like a dog in Jerusalem.

The Jesus story only appears to be believable if it was fabricated after the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE and far away from Judea.

1. You're pretty much claiming a 100% level of people being informed exactly who and when was crucified, that is not supportable even today, when we have mass literacy and internet. Assuming that in the 1st century (or 2nd or 3rd) every slave from Corinth or Pontus could just get a list of everyone who was crucified in a different province, thousands of km away, is just a nonsense premise.

2. More importantly it's a non-sequitur even for your argument. That Jesus was executed and was a deity was what the Xians were TELLING people in the first place. The guys who joined were those who BELIEVED that, yes, some divine dude got himself nailed 'like a dog', as you put it.

So, yes, that's exactly what worked. And not just for Jesus, but also for a slew of dying and rising gods, from Inanna to Dionysus. So at this point your claim is basically that you can deny reality, just because you said so. That you can take exactly what worked, and proclaim unilaterally that nah, it wouldn't.

3. But it gets even more nonsensical. Again, the guys who joined were those who actually BELIEVED that story that the Xians were saying. Namely that, yes, Jesus got himself nailed. So what you're saying is basically, yeah, but if they had evidence that the Xians were actually telling the truth, then they wouldn't have believed them. How the heck does that even work? In what bizarro world is a story MORE believable if you DON'T have evidence that it actually happened exactly as you said?

NB, I don't think they actually had any evidence at any point. But they would have given an arm for such evidence, rather than it somehow being what breaks the story. Any Xian missionary would have creamed his loincloth if they could get the list of guys to be executed on that day, with "Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth" at the top and Pilate's autograph at the bottom, rather than go "OMG, can't have people know that our story is actually true."

4. You also don't give any logical reason for why such an attitude would change at any point in time. Whether Jesus was actually nailed or not, again, the people who joined were those who did believe that yes, he did get nailed to as stick. That would be just as true in the 50's as it would be in the 70's or the 2nd century or the 3rd. But nothing had changed in Roman culture about that at any of those points in time. Crucifixion was the same punishment for rebellious slaves and the like in the 1st or 2nd or 3rd centuries, just the same. In fact, at any time before Constantine, who changed those laws. If any pagans balked at the idea of a crucified messiah in the 50's AD, they would in the 70's AD or 250 AD just as well.

So WTH changed there? It doesn't work as an argument for timing if the timing is fully irrelevant for that attitude.

Who is arguing that Joseph Smith and L Ron Hubbard never existed?

Again, that's the POINT. Nobody ever claimed that the founder of a church was made up, and nobody (that we know of) made one up. You're making an extraordinary claim about Paul, so, you know, you have some explaining to do. I mean, WTH, I'm not even going for "extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence", justified as that would be, but at least explain how that's supposed to work.

So, based on your absurdity, Adam was not made up because it is claimed God spoke to him in the garden of Eden.

Not really, because nobody claimed that Adam had founded any recent church. Nor are there any teachings of Adam, more generally. So that's a false analogy.

 

[Tassman]

Well, I'm not comparing the Necronomicon to the NT. If nothing else, the Necronomicon sounds more interesting

I know. You were comparing the inspiration for Necronomicon to the inspiration for Paul’s ‘vision’. Certainly “the Necronomicon sounds more interesting” – but then, just about anything would sound more interesting.

I'm just asking: exactly how different can the person X that inspired the character Y be from that character, for you to still claim that X is the historical Y?

Would you be ok with calling Lovecraft's mum "the historical Abdul Alhazred"?

I don’t think we are talking about the “historical” anyone – just what underlies the claims of inspiration. Paul (erroneously) claims it is the heavenly Jesus whereas Lovecraft merely says he made it all up.

If yes, then sure, under those lax standards I will concede that there might well have been a "historical Jesus" that resembles the Bible one as much as Lovecraft's mum resembles the Mad Arab.

Sure, that’s all I’m arguing for. Just a deluded man with followers, who accepted his delusions and added to them - because god. Paul in particular.