Strange you should compare the accounts of your own religion's founding to Shakespeare's plays.
Strange that you should find it so difficult to understand what I am saying. I AM writing in English, si? If you bother to go back and look at what I wrote, I was comparing YOUR applying your own personal standards to an ancient text from a vastly different culture. The comparison I made was that this is comparable to someone reading Shakespeare and then condemning him for writing lies. The problem is not in the text. The problem is the failure of the reader to understand the author's style and intent.
Shakespeare's plays are fiction, of course, but they are not lies because they do not pretend to be factual.
Shakespeare wrote "historical" plays, too. He does not specifically state that they are fiction. Does that make him a liar? NO! He was writing to entertain and to create a work of art, not to provide a history book.
You are willing to categorize the OT accounts as fiction, and still maintain belief in Judaism. Interesting.
How is it that you are so incapable of understanding what I write? I made it quite clear that I was presenting a hypothetical case. EVEN IF all of these stories were PROVEN to be mythical, you are still left with the Law, a God, a People, and a People's understanding of what they believed God expected of them. This is a BARE MINIMUM. And even this bare minimum is enough for Judaism to exist. I don't of course, believe that this bare minimum is ALL that there is. Again, to emphasize, I was speaking HYPOTHETICALLY. Got it?
The problem is the failure of the reader to understand the author's style and intent.
I am of course offering my own perspective on the matter. If you wish to read the gospels as you do, that is certainly your prerogative.