by bobcousins » Tue 07 Mar 2006, 13:52:53
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('entropyfails', 'S')ince a Jesus character has no historic proof, I very much doubt that any alleged wives or children of Jesus have any more proof than the specious arguments given for his own existence. However, if he did exist and had a wife and child, I feel somewhat certain that the Catholic Church of that era would have covered up any evidence. They really got into making stuff up in the first, second, and third centuries. But that probably includes the Jesus character himself.
In particular, the Essene set, which existed alongside the Pharisees and Sadducees, was a messianic cult. So it's quite handy that a messiah emerges jusy when you are being oppressed by Roman occupation. A lot of the Essene rituals seem to have made it into Christian ones.
It seems unlikely that Jesus never existed, but it seems more likely that a minor figure at the time was rewritten later as 'the' Messiah. The evidence of myths like religions is that they are reworkings of previous myths adapted to the current time.
It's my belief that Judaism derived from a monotheistic religion arising in ancient Egypt.