Questioning the historicity of Jesus c.325 CE?

[perseusomega9]

Some = none.

Many = all.

[Leucius Charinus]

Returning to the OP, given that we have no literary evidence that people questioned the historicity of Jesus and the "Jesus Story" in the 4th century (or indeed according to the assertions of Bart Ehrman and others, until the 18th and 19th centuries), the following question is posed ....

Is it more reasonable to believe that:

1) Nobody questioned the historicity of Jesus in the "Jesus Story" in the 4th century (through to the 18th or 19th century)

or

2) People actually questioned the historicity of Jesus in the 4th century AND the "Church Organisation" of the 4th (and subsequent) century suppressed this "heresy".

ARGUMENT FOR OPTION (1)

For those who may have missed it is IMHO completely unbelievable that nobody questioned the historicity of Jesus in the 4th century when the Jesus Story was widely published in the Roman Empire. I would like to hear from anyone who thinks option (1) is reasonable.


ARGUMENT FOR OPTION (2)

It is up to those who reject option (1) to explain the lack of literary evidence for the "Jesus Myth" in the 4th through to the 18th century. The following is the start of such an argument ....

The basic hypothesis is that many people of the 4th (and subsequent) centuries considered the "Jesus Story" to be fictional rubbish. That is, people thought this way until Constantine's sword was raised above their heads, at which time they confessed to the error of their previous thinking, and recanted their position. It was very quickly perceived that the Emperor's "New Jesus Story" was being backed by the Emperor and his army and that keeping on side with the Emperor and his army was the most reasonable thing to do. Sure perhaps most of the people could not give a fig about whether the Jesus figure in the Jesus Story was historical or fictional. What did it really matter anyway? The old pagan religions were being overthrown by the new centralised monotheistic Christian state, and a great many lucrative and tax-exempt positions were opening up during this revolutionary epoch.

There was a big difference between sitting around in the local bar and spouting off about the "Dead writings" of the emperor and then keeping a closed mouth when the Emperor's agents arrived, and committing the belief that Jesus was mythical or fictional to writing. Once it was understood that to hold such an opinion - either verbally or heaven forbid in writing - implied the death sentence, many people thought twice and thrice about the ramifications of their belief.

The "Church Organisation" of the 4th and subsequent centuries was certainly NOT the "Divine Institute" mentioned in the Jesus Story. This "Church Organisation", according to the evidence available, maintained a list of "forbidden writings", and index of "prohibited books". The first list is to be found in the writings of Eusebius and another list is to be found in the (4th/5th century) Decretum Gelasianum. The purpose of this "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" was to register those literary works which were a threat to the well being of the "Church Organisation" and one summary phrase in this Decretum Gelasianum really sums up the story ....

.... we acknowledge [these literary works] are to be not merely rejected but eliminated
from the whole Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and with their authors and the followers of its authors
to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever.

There is in my mind nothing to prevent this "Church Organisation" to have continuously searched out all types of "prohibited writings" from the 4th century until even the 20th century for the purpose of their destruction and censorship. The Church Organisation had the power to perform search and destroy missions of private homes for much of this period. They had the money and gold to procure rare and strange manuscripts once they knew of their existence. And they had the power to forcibly take such manuscripts if their owners refused to sell them to the church. Yes this is very Orwellian, but IMHO this is likely what has happened in the intervening centuries. Which organisation was first to control the access to the Dead Sea Scrolls for the first few decades after their discovery in the 20th century. Before the 20th century you don't need to be a genius to understand the process of how the "Church Organisation" was extremely interested in certain manuscript discoveries.

Is this a conspiracy theory? Well yes it is. The evidence is that the "Church Organisation" was extremely Orwellian and controlled the literary evidence by means of its power and influence for the last 1600 odd years since the "Jesus STory" was first received by the populace of the 4th century Roman Empire. So those who wish to laugh at the framing of such a conspiracy theory may now commence their laughter. OTOH those who wish to add anything to what I have written above, or ask questions, or to reject any of the claims made above, may now do so.

OVER.

[MrMacSon]

Returning to the OP, given that we have no literary evidence that people questioned the historicity of Jesus and the "Jesus Story" in the 4th century (or indeed according to the assertions of Bart Ehrman and others, until the 18th and 19th centuries), the following question is posed ....

Is it more reasonable to believe that:

• 1) Nobody questioned the historicity of Jesus in the "Jesus Story" in the 4th century (through to the 18th or 19th century)

or

• 2) People actually questioned the historicity of Jesus in the 4th century AND the "Church Organisation" of the 4th (and subsequent) century suppressed this "heresy".

I have read somewhere that it wasn't until the Dutch relaxed the blasphemy/heresy laws (the first to do so?) that the Dutch Radicals academic work questioning the bible as history was able to be undertaken (openly, as a collective, at least; and eventually extensively, over whole careers).

[Leucius Charinus]

I have read somewhere that it wasn't until the Dutch relaxed the blasphemy/heresy laws (the first to do so?) that the Dutch Radicals academic work questioning the bible as history was able to be undertaken (openly, as a collective, at least; and eventually extensively, over whole careers).

Precisely.

To summarise, between the 4th century and the 17th century "HERESY LAWS" were prosecuted by the church.
These gave way in the 17th century to "BLASPHEMY LAWS" which were prosecuted by the nations and their states.
These in turn became "relaxed" only in 19th century at which time the Jesus Myth discussion arose.

Here are some links and quotes.

http://www.richardwebster.net/abriefhis ... phemy.html
Chapman Cohen’s Blasphemy – a Plea for Religious Equality, which was published in 1922:

• Blasphemy laws are a heritage from a wicked and deplorable past. In their essence they belong to a period when laws were far more ferocious than they are today, and when it was held the duty of the State to enforce and openly coerce opinion. They are also part of the general belief that the right discharge of the duties of citizenship depends, in some more or less obscure way, on the holding of right religious beliefs. In such circumstances, unbelief, heresy and blasphemy partake of the nature of treason. The heretic is one who is a threat to the welfare of the tribe or nation, and, in the interests of the whole group, he must be suppressed … The blasphemy laws are aimed at opinion and opinion alone. It is to the spirit of persecution they owe their existence; it is the spirit of intolerance and persecution they always serve
  
  Heresy ---> Blasphemy
  
  The laws against blasphemy which have, in one form or another, existed in most Western countries in the last three centuries, grew out of the much older law of heresy, which was designed to protect the Christian church against all forms of dissidence. The origins of this law can in turn be traced back to the New Testament
  
  
  
  Inquisition
  
  Inquisition. This organisation was set up by the Pope and handed over in 1232 to the Dominican order, who soon became known as ‘Domini canes’ or ‘the hounds of the Lord’. From small beginnings the Inquisition rapidly grew to become one of the mightiest and most powerful institutions in Europe. It took the form of a travelling ecclesiastical court which warned towns of its impending visits and encouraged individual Catholics to denounce all ‘heretical’ Christians or unbelievers
  
  If the victims made no confession they were tortured:
  
  The heretic was dragged into the torture chamber and shown all the terrible instruments of torture. If this dreadful display did not make him confess to his errors, then the instruments were applied to his body, one by one, in a process of slowly increasing pain … Tortures lasting three or four hours were not unusual. While the victim was being tortured, the rack or other instrument was frequently sprinkled with holy water. Countless frightful means were used in the procedure, all with the sole purpose of crushing the victim’s resistance and making him confess … A cloth was usually pushed into the victim’s mouth to prevent the torturers from being distracted or irritated by his wild screams. A heretic might be tortured in this way for hours, until his body had become a flayed, bruised, broken and bleeding mass. From time to time he would be asked whether he was at last ready to confess. Overwhelmed by pain and half out of his mind with anguish, he would usually, after a few hours of this torment, give all the Information that the Inquisitors wanted to hear
  
  Walter Nigg, Das Buch der Ketzer, p 210, quoted by Joachim Kahl, The Misery of Christianity, Penguin, 1971, p.66.
  
  
  
  Luther
  
  At various times, particularly, in the later stages of his career, he condemned not only Anabaptism, but also Arianism, Judaism and Islam as blasphemies. Sin was blasphemy, the political opinions of the peasantry were blasphemy, even missing church was blasphemy. At times Luther’s anti-Catholicism was even more violent than his anti-Judaism. All Catholics were blasphemers. Their Mass was blasphemous and their popes blasphemers and Antichrists. They should be compelled to worship in Lutheran churches on pain of excommunication and exile. In 1536, after some hesitation, Luther finally endorsed imprisonment and death for Catholic blasphemies, in order to ensure that their contagion did not spread.
  
  
  
  
  Calvin
  
  In Geneva Calvin, after some initial signs of leniency, harshly opposed both blasphemy and heresy as soon as he had the power to do so, calling heretics and blasphemers ‘traitors to God’. In the case of Servetus he himself was directly responsible for having a blasphemer killed. Servetus was a gifted theologian and a scholar of genius. He had, however, opposed the doctrine of the Trinity and he had imprudently compounded this crime by openly opposing Calvin as well. Having unsuccessfully denounced Servetus to the Catholic Inquisition, Calvin eventually had him arrested in Geneva where he was tried for heresy and blasphemy and sentenced to death. In this instance Calvin opposed death by burning as being too cruel and endorsed Servetus’s request that he should be beheaded. He was overruled by the court and Servetus was burnt the next day along with a copy of his heretical book.
  
  
  
  LAWS
  
  In England the crime of speaking against God was punished as heresy until the early years of the seventeenth century. The penalty was death. Gradually, however, the old laws of heresy fell into disuse. This happened in most Protestant countries, where, having been repeatedly accused of heresy themselves, Protestants came to dislike the term.
  
  Both in England and in colonial America the concept which gradually took the place of heresy was that of blasphemy or blasphemous libel. Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the courts frequently invoked the blasphemy law with a quite vicious repressiveness against those who made disrespectful references to God or Jesus or the Church. In particular ribaldry or obscenity directed against Christianity was rigorously outlawed.

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=s ... emeny.html
Blasphemy in the Christian World: A History (review)
P. C. Kemeny


From: Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Volume 39, Number 4, Spring 2009
pp. 567-569 |

• In Chapters 2 and 3, Nash outlines the history of blasphemy from 1500 a.d. to the present, delineating the differences and similarities between premodern and modern understandings of the concept. In the thirteenth century, Christians in Europe began to distinguish between heresy (the propagation of false doctrine and apostasy from orthodoxy) and blasphemy (expressing disrespect to God by using profanity or ridicule to discredit God’s power). Yet the concept of blasphemy proved to be remarkably malleable. Originally, Nash contends, blasphemy was interpreted as a religious crime with secular repercussions. Blasphemy laws helped the church and the state to exercise social control of deviant behavior, since blasphemy often occurred at taverns, and blasphemers were typically drunk.
  
  During the Enlightenment, secular activists intentionally sought to subvert the intellectual credibility of orthodox Christianity and the Church’s cultural hegemony. Unable to extinguish such “active blasphemy,” states and churches slowly began to grant religious toleration to deists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and to freethinkers in the nineteenth. By the twentieth century, libertarian concerns about free speech rights had eclipsed concerns about theology or the well-being of the community. But the triumph of free-speech rights has hardly been secured. As the recent debates about Andres Serrano’s photograph, Piss Christ, and Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (New York, 1988) indicate, multiculturalism and other efforts to generate cultural and social inclusion conflict with issues of freedom of expression.

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=262
Leonard W. Levy. Blasphemy: Verbal Offense against the Sacred from Moses to Salman Rushdie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. xi + 688 pp. $18.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8078-4515-8.

Reviewed by Virginia E. Hench (William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawa'i at Manoa)
Published on H-Law (January, 1996)

• Leonard W. Levy's Blasphemy is a comprehensive history of a curious crime: verbal offense against the sacred. The offense is curious, because, as Levy asks, "if vengeance belongs to the supernatural governor of life, why invoke the criminal law?" This question is, of course, unanswerable, but Levy makes a compelling case for his theory that temporal rulers have historically used blasphemy accusations as proxies for persecution of political dissent in systems where the prevailing powers identify themselves with Divine right.

http://www.brentonpriestley.com/writing/blasphemy.htm
Blasphemy and the Law: A Comparative Study (2006)
Brenton Priestley

• As is widely know,’ Epstein writes,
  many American colonists came to America to flee religious persecution in Europe. What is perhaps less well known is the extent to which these same colonists made religion an integral part of public life in America.[14]
  
  In his article, Epstein goes on to illustrate the oppressive religious laws that existed that existed in the US during its infancy. This included, in many US jurisdictions, the death penalty for blasphemy.[15]
  • [14] Steven B. Epstein, ‘Rethinking the Constitutionality of Ceremonial Deism’ (1996) 96 Columbia Law Review 2099. Reprinted in Cornelia Koch (ed), Comparative Law Course Reader (2006), Appendix B/3a.
    
    [15] Blasphemy: Overseas (2005) Caslon Analytics <http://caslon.com.au/blasphemyprofile6.htm#us>, at 19 April 2006.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE LAW OF BLASPHEMIY.
Author(s): Courtney Kenny Source: The Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1922), pp. 127-142
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Editorial Committee of the Cambridge Law Journal
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4514873 .

• The first indictment for blasphemy belongs to the lax period when, after the fall of the Commonwealth, the Restoration of Charles II was followed by outbursts of disorderly licence. The misdoings that had formerly been checked by the Star Chamber and by the Ecclesiastical Courts had now lost those restraints.
  
  1676
  
  Sir Matthew Hale, who presided, emphatically asserted the jurisdiction of the secular Courts; saying
  
  "Contumelious reproaches of God or of the religion established are punishable here. . . .
  The Christian religion is a part of the law itself."
  
  And as to the particular case before him, Ventris records him as saying that
  
  "Such kind "-observe the limitation-" of wicked blasphemies are . . . a crime against the laws,
  State, and government, and therefore punishable in this Court. Christianity is parcel of the laws of England."
  
  
  
  1729
  Woolston was tried in 1729, and convicted. The King's Bench refused to grant a new trial.
  Its decision attracted the attention of three reporters (Fitzgibboni, 64; 2 Strange, 832; 1 Barnardiston, 162, 266).
  The defendant was fined, sent to prison for a year, and ordered to remain there until he could find sureties for his good behaviour throughout life.
  He never found them. Proceeding upon the authority of Taylor's Case,
  the Court said that the Christian religion is established in this country, and therefore they
  
  " would not allow any books to be writ which would tend to alter that establishment."
  " They would not stiffer it to be debated whether to write against Christianity in general
  was not . . . punishable at common law."

[Leucius Charinus]

The OP might be alternatively described as the history of scepticism regarding the historicity of Jesus.

According to the Biblical Historian Bart Ehrman such scepticism did not exist on the planet until the eighteenth century....

• "The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus." (Did Jesus Exist?, p.96)

So is Bart wrong or right?

According to the Classical Historian Michael Grant there is room to doubt Bart's dismissal, due to the existence of the "Docetic heresy".

• "This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that Jesus never came into the world "in the flesh", but only seemed to; (I John 4:2) and it was given some encouragement by Paul's lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts to insist that Jesus did not even "seem" to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods." - Michael Grant, "Jesus", 1997, pp. 199–200.

So what is the essence of this "Docetic opinion"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism

In Christian terminology, docetism (from the Greek δοκεῖν/δόκησις dokeĩn (to seem) /dókēsis (apparition, phantom),[1][2] according to Norbert Brox, is defined narrowly as "the doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus, was altogether mere semblance without any true reality." [3][4] Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.

In the 21st century we have the existence of holographic illusions by which a person can "seem to exist" but the ancients did not have this technology. Therefore exactly how are we to reconstruct what these docetists were meaning? How can a person only "seem to exist" in antiquity without holograms? Was this just a euphemism for "fictional"? If it was not, how is the docetic heresy to be properly translated to 21st century sensibilities?

Quite related to this are the instances in the letters of John which attest to people "who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh."

How can an historical person, holograms aside, not some to planet Earth in the flesh?

[bcedaifu]

The OP might be alternatively described as the history of scepticism regarding the historicity of Jesus.

According to the Biblical Historian Bart Ehrman such scepticism did not exist on the planet until the eighteenth century....

"The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus." (Did Jesus Exist?, p.96)

Two points:

a. I have not read DJE. However, if accurate, this quote is erroneous, for a myth, any myth, must have a supernatural component. Absent reference to some supernatural aspect, the "myth" becomes, instead, simply, a legend--hyperbolic argument. The concept of a mythical Jesus of Nazareth can not, itself, be "mythical", for its elaboration is purely human.

No one, to my knowledge has argued divine intervention, as a basis for arguing that Jesus had always been merely a fictional character. Without attribution to a divine entity, a document, idea, or interpretation cannot be described as "mythical". Ehrman erred, and for a university professor to write with such laxity, suggests that his entire publication is shoddy.

b. eighteenth century? I thought Contra Celsum was written by Origen in the third century?

"I will ask them where they have come from, or who is the author of their traditional laws. Nobody, they will say.
....
The Christians have no authority for their doctrine, which is a perversion and caricature of the ancient tradition."

What does "no authority" signify, if not F I C T I O N?

[Leucius Charinus]

The OP might be alternatively described as the history of scepticism regarding the historicity of Jesus.

According to the Biblical Historian Bart Ehrman such scepticism did not exist on the planet until the eighteenth century....

"The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus." (Did Jesus Exist?, p.96)

a. I have not read DJE. However, if accurate, this quote is erroneous, for a myth, any myth, must have a supernatural component. Absent reference to some supernatural aspect, the "myth" becomes, instead, simply, a legend--hyperbolic argument.

Bart Ehrman is using hyperbole to describe the sceptical idea that Jesus did not exist as a modern (18th century) "myth".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

Hyperbole (/haɪˈpɜrbəliː/ hy-PUR-bə-lee;[1] Greek: ὑπερβολή hyperbolē, "exaggeration") is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally.

His hyperbole does not stop there since he has likened people who entertain such thinking (i.e. "mythicists") to that category of people who may be labelled as "holocaust deniers".

Rather than qualify his statement that the "Jesus Myth" is an 18th century phenomenom which arose at precisely that time on planet Earth when the draconian "Blasphemy Laws" of all Christian nations and their states were relaxed (after almost fourteen centuries of operation, including the "Heresy Laws") the Biblical Historian simply uses rhetoric and hyperbole to advertise his one-sided point, sweeping all the negative evidence against his point under the carpet.

[MrMacSon]

The OP might be alternatively described as the history of scepticism regarding the historicity of Jesus.

According to the Biblical Historian Bart Ehrman such scepticism did not exist on the planet until the eighteenth century....

• "The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus." (Did Jesus Exist?, p.96)

So is Bart wrong or right?

Bart is primarily a theologian; and a "biblical-scholar". He does not appear to understand principles of historiography or the Historical Method.

[Leucius Charinus]

The OP might be alternatively described as the history of scepticism regarding the historicity of Jesus.

According to the Biblical Historian Bart Ehrman such scepticism did not exist on the planet until the eighteenth century....

• "The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents. It was made up in the eighteenth century. One might well call it a modern myth, the myth of the mythical Jesus." (Did Jesus Exist?, p.96)

So is Bart wrong or right?

Bart is primarily a theologian; and a "biblical-scholar". He does not appear to understand principles of historiography or the Historical Method.

Well I am sure he knows this stuff but is pitching his arguments like a theologian from the pulpit to the converted.

He knows how to appeal to his audience and sell books by the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device.

His focus is on the "Divine Institute" of the "Early Universal Church" and he may conveniently forget what happened after the 4th century.

So you could be right Mac. Contrast the following statement from Michael Grant:

• "This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all
  and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that
  Jesus never came into the world "in the flesh", but only seemed to; (I John 4:2) and it was given some encouragement by
  Paul's lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been
  attempts to insist that Jesus did not even "seem" to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were
  pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising
  gods." - Michael Grant, "Jesus", 1997, pp. 199–200.

The facts are that there is no evidence for the opinion of a fictional Jesus story in the 4th century, and before the
18th century. However it is also factual that there is ample evidence to both suggest and establish that the "Church
Organisation" was corrupt, and that it was responsible for the destruction and/or censorship of literary evidence
between the 4th and 18th century. Is it then just a coincidence that at precisely during the epoch in which the
national and state laws of blasphemy (contiguous with the preceeding Church laws of heresy) were relaxed, the written
opinions of a fictional Jesus commenced to appear on planet Earth? I don't think this is a coincidence.

The question is how to explain these facts (and others of course) and whether there are any relationship(s) between
them. As I see it there are at least two options of explanation:


Option 1

We may make the hypothesis that nobody had the opinion that the Jesus story was fiction because this fits the evidence.
But this hypothesis IMO seems very immature and childish. The Alexandrian Greeks were known for their scepticism. As far
as I am concerned this hypothesis is not very realistic in the open political sense. Someone must have spat the dummy at
the Jesus story. There would have been extreme detractors. There would have been satirists. Some people would have
suspected that the Jesus character in the Jesus Story was fiction.

To compound the issue, the full name of "Jesus" is not made explicit in the earliest Greek bibles. All that appears is a
code "IS". And this same code was also used in the Greek LXX for the name of "Joshua". So if the name "Jesus" was not
made explicit, how are sceptical (or even rational) people supposed to relate this "IS" code to the name of an
historical character supposedly incarnated "in the flesh" during the rule of Augustus? The answer? Well all I can suggest
is that they needed further information, available only within the "Church Organisation". An average literate Greek reading
these earliest "Jesus ["IS"] Stories" must have been confronted with a coding system (See "Nomina Sacra").


Option (2)

Alternatively we may also make the hypothesis that some people were extremely sceptical and did have the opinion that the Jesus Story was fictional AND that the "Church Organisation" took special pains to get rid of and suppress all written opinions of this scepticism. I have already mentioned - on the basis of evidence - that it is reasonable to assume that this organisation maintained an index of prohibited literature from the 4th century to the present, which was only made public in the 16th century with the Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Here is literary evidence from the 4th/5th century of not merely rejection but elimination of literature by the church
in the decree of Decretum Gelasianum

• " we acknowledge that [some specific literature] is to be not merely rejected
  but eliminated from the whole Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church
  and with their authors and the followers of its authors
  to be damned in the inextricable shackles of anathema forever."

How many generations of malevolent persecution would it take before this (hypothetical) scepticism in its written form
could be weeded out of the Christian empire and thrown into the "eternal fires of damnation" by the agents of the
"church organisation"?


SUMMARY

So which option is the more reasonable one with respect to the available evidence?
IMO the second option is far more reasonable with respect to the available evidence.
Obviously the case cannot be proven either way.


Please discuss.

[GakuseiDon]

Perhaps this might support your Option 2. Tatian, in his Address to the Greeks, states this:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... dress.html

• And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athene, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed.

So the notion of heroes mentioned in poetry not existing was an idea that had already been around for hundreds of years by the time Christianity started.