h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I see we have a Mohammed entry. There's a Buddha entry. There's a request for a Jesus entry. Why not stick in a Moses entry, while we're at it?

I could possibly do a Moses entry. It would be a lot of work, but it could be done.

That was meant to be a challenge, of course. If someone takes Jesus, I'll do Moses.

Opti volunteered to do an entry on Jesus, but she is famous for not working on things she has said she will do.

Actually, I've found Opti's entry on Jesus, A2920727 and it is a dreadful piece of Christian propaganda with not a hope of being accepted into the Guide as it stands.

I see.

Well, the challenge stands. Someone must be capable of writing an objective piece on the fellow.

Enjoy Greece!

I'll take the challenge, though I've not written for the Guide before and am pretty new to this site. I'm an aethist anthropologist who took plenty of religious philosophy and Biblical studies courses in school, and was fascinated by the Canonical and non-Canonical Gospels and their similarities/discrepancies. Got back into it yesterday when the Gospel of Judas was revealed. I'm digging into my notes and opening that dusty study Bible, and will try to come up with something concise. Can't wait to read about Moses.

You got it. I'm trying to figure out how to do it properly myself - since most of what we know about Moses comes down through the Talmud and Medrash - er, is that in your area?

It doesn't have to be concise - just not tediously long.
Will get busy.

With this its almost impossible to be concise, but what's tediously long? I always tend to over-analyze and biblical stuff lends to that wonderfully. You know - the supposed to be 150 page thesis that gets to 400 pages and dies a horrible death. I'll just stick to scriptural quotations to illustrate, and people can make up there own minds about what they portray Jesus as. None of the "so and so portrays him as a good commie" and that tripe. I think you'll have to rely heavily on traditional texts for Moses (will you use a translation?), but you might want to throw something in on current and where it came from, so people (Christians, Jews, etc.) can recognize where their own traditions are coming from. Sorry, though, not my area, although I remember reading a great life-story of him in the Cartoon History of the Universe. Right now I'm just struggling trying to learn the XML they want for entries. Apologies for no paragraphs, by the way - all my posts today put in a bunch of number symbols for my hard returns, so I'm writing Kafkaesque.

You don't need to use GuideML if you're struggling with it. If your entry gets picked, the sub editor will do all that for you. Unless you want to learn GuideML of course, in which case go for it.

It's good to know GuideML; makes the entry more likely to be picked and looks good in the PS also. (Subbie plugging for less work)

I think I'm going to put my disclaimer in the beginning: you know, "there's no archeological evidence of his existence, so everything is taken from Biblical and Talmudic accounts, and lets leave it at that." After that I'll just factually relate what they say, and if anyone complains, tough.

I don't intend to analyze at all; but Moses hasn't received quite the attention Jesus has, so you might be forced to.
I'd reccommend steering clear of it if possible, though. You're bound to offend.

That would also shorten some of the tedious bits.

Your right - no analysis - just the story. It wouldn't be bad to look into some historical analyses on Moses, just to evaluate the credability of the evidence, or even place the story within its genre (abandoned babies stories). Linguists, mythologists, and anthropologists go nuts over things like that. And, it's interesting to see what other people say. With Jesus, just about everyone, Christian and non, have their own formulated view - so just sticking to pedantic text may be giving a different view than what they have. And the question was specifically about the Jesus of the Gospels. GuideML - I've been using the tags but have a couple of questions - I tried to preview my document (which I'm writing in Word) through the preview screen under Write and Entry, because I'm worried about how it will look - which showed me some errors I had, but didn't show me anything formatted. Is there any way to do this and see what the final product will look like? Or do I have to accept on faith that it will look okay after it goes through the parser? Is there a raw text example beyond the short ones on the Guide syntax page?

Scratch the question on GuideML. Once I fixed all the errors it worked beautifully! Not too hard, except my links didn't work. I'm through the intro, and into the meat, but it'll take a lot more work.

I'm more than halfway through too. Started with background, ended with de@th, and am considering a legacy section. We can pop them into PR together and link to each other.

I'm sticking with just the story. Any analysis will get people's danders up. We'll have enough insulted people trolling the threads without deliberately baiting them. Besides, I think so few people know the details of Moses' life according to medrash that it'll be interesting enough as a basic biography.

Glad you fixed the GuideML problem yourself, cuz I had no idea what you were talking about.

If your links are out of H2G2 you write text
If they're in H2G2 you write text

If you're used to HTML with , it's a drop disconcerting.

A10786700
That's where my entry will be, when I post it tommorow. I'll probably finish it on Monday or Tuesday, schedule permitting.

A10784090 My unfinished draft is here, but I marked it Not For Review, so I'm not sure if you can see it, or not? It was a test to see if my GuideML worked - thanks for the links hint, by the way - got them to work. It'll change quite a bit as I find all those papers from uni that have been buried and my husband's been begging me to toss (good thing I didn't, huh?). I'm pretty busy today, but I'm working on it slowly. May take a evenings this next week to get it together.

Yep, it worked. There were a few funny looking 'o's around- not sure if it's my browser or yours.

Throwing in that line about not being able to verify Jesus historically is asking for trouble. Besides, I'm pretty sure he's mentioned in the Talmud, (as a rabble rousing trouble maker who ought to be put down ) and they had no reason to promote a fictional character. ( Don't tell anyone, but I think they take responsibility for his too.)

I think it's worth a decsion on the quality of the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. I have a book that discusses the historical evidence for the events in the Bible. It doesn't mean much to me because I've never read the Bible, but I'll see if I can dig it out and see what it says about Jesus.

Please do.
2000 years aint that long. I have no idea what comprises 'archeological evidence', but if you're looking for an obelisk with his name on it, it isn't going to be there. If contemporary sages had polemic things to say about him, wouldn't that qualify for existence?

Sorry. I got a bit carried away. I'm about as skeptical about who made up christianity as anyone, but I get annoyed at the historian insistance on "non-existant until proven existant" attitude to all things biblical. As if the gospels and Jewish contemporaries got together one night and concocted Jesus all for kicks. Yet they consider Josephus Flavius a good enough source, when they know perfectly well he invented a good chunk of his 'history'.

sorry, just ranted, didn't I?