Those are my words, Benjamin. With positive culture, I want to point to the culture that is functioning at the top level of a society. In Sparta, for instance, the culture was clearly and obviously one of being great soldiers and Leonidas a very obvious example of that culture. In that case, there is no doubt about the figure having existed, and we have a perfect fit between the individual and the culture the individual existed in. People would write freely about such a person.

With a negative culture, and again, this is just my trying to find words, a figure may also rise, but that person is then not of the dominant, condoned culture. I could have used words as counterculture, or subversive culture. Yet the point being that the overall culture itself would not be writing about that person because the rising figure is not from the condoned culture. The writing that will occur about that figure is then from a group that is suppressed, which will make them more likely to attribute miracles and super powers to that person, to give that person the power that the regular culture is not giving them.

As such, asking ourselves whether that figure truly existed or not is already making us apply that positive-culture approach toward that negative-culture figure.

Let me say it for just myself. I would never doubt the existence of Jesus as a real figure unless someone had evidence that he was not real. I do not want to stand in a position without clothes on just because the positive culture created that spot. People that do not belong to the prevailing culture are often ignored by that superior culture. I will not support that ignorant behavior and I will not stand in that position. I guess I am rejecting even posing the question because it is asked from a position that does not address the deeper reality of that (or of our) culture.