Hi ICBehindTheCurtain
You are quite correct. Archaeology has demonstrated the Bible to be a wholly Mythological work. Rather than depress me or cause me to 'lose faith' this understanding brought me great joy. I abandoned Christianity because I had become educated enough to see all of the Bible's conflicts not only with itself, but with science and history. So, when I learned the Bible is not a fouled up historical account, but pure Myth, I was able to embrace it again and find delightful new allegorical meanings. I was able to return to the spirituality of my own culture, rather than try to become an Oriental or an East Indian.
This is the proper role and function of all sacred scriptures. There was no historical Buddha. I wrote a rather long essay demonstrating this fact, and quite a few fellow priests were none too pleased. Others had also come to that same conclusion. 'The Buddha' is actually all of us. His life is the life of all humans. What he became we all have the potential to become. The actual meaning of Buddha sitting under the 'Bodhi tree' and finding enlightenment is not about a literal man. The tree stands for the shushuma, the pathway along our spine for Kundalini to move and activate all our chakras in the enlightenment process.
Christ is the same. We are all the Divine Incarnate. By identifying personally with the Myth, we too can die to the world, the flesh, the ego, and rise anew into the Life Divine. We are all potential Christs. I go into quite a bit of detail on this matter in Jehovah Unmasked. At least, in the published version I do.
I try to enable people to see what a wonderful liberating experience it is to let the Bible be what it really is and what it was intended to be. A book of Myths that encodes powerful spiritual teachings in those Myths. I was puzzled at first why so many people found this revelation to be distressing. Then I realized they, like all moderns, had lost the capacity to resonate/grok with Myth. 'Myth' has come to mean fantasy, fable, tall tale, story-telling fit only for kids.
That just isn't so. Myths are far more than just stories.
An example I gave in another post, the Myth of Prometheus is not literally true but it does carry truth of another kind. Parables are not literally true, but they too are carriers of truth. Most (not all) of the Bible's stories are the same way. We are supposed to look beneath the surface of the literal words (the husk) and find the inner kernal of life. However, modern humans think unless something is true in a literal historical-scientific manner it is simply nonsense. It is that attitude that is the real nonsense. We still tell stories constantly in movies and on television that deal with deep truths in a story format. We have become conditioned to think the Bible is supposed to be a nook of science and history.
A moment's reflection is all that's necessary to see that such an attitude toward the Bible is anachronistic because we are bringing modern concerns about science and history to an ancient book that has a spiritual purpose. History is the modern sense is in fact a modern concern and pursuit.
To sum up, I have no problem with the Bible anymore, or any other sacred scriptures...with the exception of the Koran.
Back to your insight that sparked my ramble. I highly recommend a fairly recent book titled Mythic Past; Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel, by Thomas L.. Thompson. It is a marvelous distillation of the facts archaeology has uncovered concerning the Bible and 'Israel." It's a marvelous factual nail in the coffin of fundamentalism because it chronicles the utter lack of any corroborating evidence for the Bible's stories in history. Regardless of what The Discovery Channel and its ilk tell us, in their effort to appease the angry and violent Religious Right.
Remember..
YOU are the Christ!
Nathan
