Jackie
I am sorely tempted to round up all my F.A.C.T.S. colleagues and march at your statement...
In reply to:
And yet, civilization was hardly advanced by the time of Christ's birth! Dare I say it?--he might have been real.
But this board is about language, not comparative religion, or history. Suffice to say that the Roman Empire was suffused, at the time, with interesting spiritual notions from the East; Mithrasism (or Mithraism) being the most well known of them. Also, it was arguably the most advanced civilisation in the West until the mediaeval period. Finally, a lot of the Old Testament was written without reference to the nearly contemporaneous great Greek philosophers. The New Testament, written within the Roman civilisation, can hardly have failed to be influenced by them...
For what it's worth, I believe the scholarly opinion is that somebody called Jesus, who founded a religion latterly called Christianity, is likely to have lived around that time. The scholars are, of course, silent about his putative divinity!
cheer
the sunshine warrior
