Question of the day:
Do you think Jesus of Nazareth existed? Why or why not?
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Yes, I think he existed, but he was just a (very successful) charlatan.
I would counter that he wasn’t very successful. He gained few followers during his time, and even failed to convince any of the priests who worshiped the same god he did.
The real success belongs to Saul who became Paul. His Mediterranean wide ad campaign took a relatively unknown Semitic doomsday prophet and set the stage to turn him into the worlds largest religion.
Of course a great deal of the success world wide belongs to Constantine, but that’s another story.
Yes, I think he did. If the entire story were a fable, there would be no need to have him be born in Bethlehem and then moved to Nazareth (to fulfill the prophecy). The author could have simply had Jesus be born in Nazareth in the first place. Things like this suggest that there was a man named Jesus, a Jewish rabbi probably, whose preachings were converted into a new religion.
I suspect it was his followers that were the charlatans, Flo.
Yes I think he existed, as to me it raises more questions than it answers to say he was complete fiction. Though I doubt we know much about him from the gospels.
No. I don’t think there was a person who was born of a virgin, performed actual miracles or lived again after legitimately dying. Looking at the actions attributed to that person and working backward, I don’t think there’s anything to suggest it was a real person and not just a symbol of poverty-induced religious zealotry.
There were several prophets and self-proclaimed messiahs back in those days. Jesus was a fairly common name. I think that he’s a composite of various accounts of those men.
Though, I did always like the image of Jesus turning the messiah thing on its head. The Jews were expecting a warrior-king on a white horse leading an army with swords, instead they got a carpenter on a donkey leading children with palm fronds. It almost relates to the tradition of a trickster character in many religions.
I have my doubts. The people who wrote about him obviously didn’t have any trouble writing totally outrageous lies. I have had quite a few discussions with a friend who is really sensible, except when it comes to the existence of Jesus. He doesn’t believe the supernatural shit, but he does believe that Jesus existed.
If this was a trial, and we found that the witness lied, wouldn’t we strike all of their testimony? You can’t go on what was written by these nuts, they were liars. Where is Paul Bunion and Babe, the big blue ox? I read a bunch of stories about them. Without physical proof of his existence, proof that does not rely on trusting someone who died a few thousand years ago to be truthful in their writings, I will continue to doubt that he ever actually walked on this Earth. History needs to not rely on the bible any more than it does on Spider Man comics.
Except that Spider Man is real.
I think he existed. His stories may have been altered in some ways (like say, making him God), but from what I have seen and heard there seems to be evidence for his life.
(oops, messed up my message and lost this part)
I also think that he was brown. Not white, not black, not yellow or any mix thereof. Those Catholic paintings and depictions of a white Jesus always baffled me. I mean, doesn’t it make sense that he would be the same colour as the people who lived around him?
don’t know, I wasn’t around at that time, but if I had to guess, I believe there was a man named Jesus and he did probably have influence in Israel, similar to Gandhi or the Dalia Lama.
Yes, I think he did exist. There were many men claiming to be Messiahs that arose in those times. I suspect he was like many of them, a firebrand who preached an overthrow of the Roman occupation. His words were handed down through many men, rewritten to be more acceptable to the Romans, modified by priests and scholars and probably unrecognizable to anyone who actually heard them.
None of the historians of that time wrote a single word about Jesus, with the exception of two obvious Jewish forgeries and two questionable Roman entries. Until some reputable historical writings appear, I vote “no”.
I agree. The supposedly monumental events at the end of his life should have been all over the historical record.
Honestly, I doubt that Jesus existed. If he did though, he was not a messiah, he might have been a really good politician.
Remember that there are no respected historians who wrote about him.
I don’t look at his exsistence as a falacy. I do believe he fell into the “big fish” category.
There’s only one known Roman reference to Pontius Pilate, so historical record doesn’t answer the question (after all, he was the Equestrian procurator of the province of Judaea — a not insignificant position).
I believe Jesus existed, but in a much different way than the embellished stories we read in the Bible. A carpenter who heard tell of Buddhism, adopted it to his cultural norms, got a few followers, pissed off the ruling class for being a flaming fucking liberal, and perhaps even got killed for it.
Nothing supernatural.
Is it conceivably possible that a militant Jewish cult leader named Jesus (or several militant Jewish cult leaders named Jesus) existed sometime during the Roman occupation of Judea?
Yes.
Is it likely?
No.
Were there hundreds of gnostic mystics and mystery religions throughout Judea who worshiped godmen that were born of of virgins, performed miracles, were sacrificed, and rose from the dead?
Yes.
Is it likely that the Jesus story (and Christianty itself) is a syncretisation of these gnostic beliefs and the Hellenistic ideas and influences of the period?
Yes.
Is it likely that the Jesus personage described in the bible actually existed, was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was sacrificed, and rose from the dead?
No. At least no more likely than any of the hundreds of other identical godmen of the time who shared exactly the same attributes as the mythical Jesus.
Did an itinerant apocalyptic rabbi exist during this period with the incredibly common Jewish name Yeshua?
It would be far more miraculous if one didn’t.
Yes. I believe he existed as a man. I also believe that his mother had sex with the stable boy and lied about it so as not to be stoned to death.
I have always said that Jesus and Hitler are very similar in many ways. The biggest difference obviously was their message, Jesus had a message of love/acceptance/forgiveness and Hitler had one of hatred/vengence/dominance. Regardless, they were both just normal men that incited enormous amounts of passion in their followers and their messages went far beyond their own lifetimes.
Also, they were both crazy.
” I also believe that his mother had sex with the stable boy and lied about it so as not to be stoned to death.”
Reminds me of that saying – what is more likely – that the entire natural order of the universe should suddenly come to a halt (virgin birth, walk on water, rising from dead etc.) or that a Jewish author should tell a lie?
It doesn’t matter.
Perhaps someone named Jesus existed around that time, perhaps he was even a preacher. But of course the miraculous stories of his life are false, so let me ask:
Does it actually matter whether there was actually a lumberjack named Paul Bunyan?
Jesus of Nazareth? No.
First off, the name Jesus wasn’t a common name. The person behind the Jesus myth might have used the name/tittle Yeshua, but definitely not Jesus.
Nazareth is also a problem. Excavations have found no evidence of a living city during the 1st century. There is strong evidence that the location was used as a necropolis, which strengthens the claim that there were no people living there. Jewish custom prohibited living near the burial site of dead Jews.
I think all the evidence is quite conclusive. Both the name Jesus and his city of birth were fabrications made up decades, if not centuries after the real living person who started it all was crucified.
The person behind the Jesus myth might have used the name/tittle Yeshua, but definitely not Jesus.
This is nothing but a question of translation. Both are forms of Joshua.
Yeah, Peter is right.
Yep, Peter’s right about the name, and Revylution is right about Nazareth. There is no evidence of it having been an occupied settlement at the time of Jesus’ alleged existence on Earth. Perhaps it is a mistranslation of something else that was later ret-conned into meaning he came from Nazareth, to fit with prophecies from the OT. Then there are all the contradictions about the census and going to Bethlehem and so on. The character just reeks of mythological memes later being interwoven with misunderstandings.
The census thing is pretty damning.
What kind of census requires you to leave the place that you live in order to be counted as living somewhere else anyway?!
A made up one that is trying to account for conflicting stories and prophecies.
Yes, its definitely a story for children, is not ‘reasonable’ in the least. Tell ya what, let’s just summarily dismiss with it eh? I mean seriously, he said that we couldn’t ‘enter in to this ‘kingdom’ (whatever that means) that he said was found within us (yea, right) unless we were as little children, trusting, foolish, innocent, ugg, who could be so gullible, so stupid? Besides, there’s no ‘evidence’ to support he was even a real person, that he ever existed?
I’m out, gimme science or gimme…
*wink…
Taking pride in foolishness does not make you any less foolish.
“Tell ya what, let’s just summarily dismiss with it eh?”
If it conflicts with itself then it cannot be truth, so… yes.
No he didn’t exist. How many real people are born of virgins, walk on water, resurrect the dead, come back from the dead, or ascend bodily into the heavens? The character of jesus, as portrayed by the bible, is clearly a mythical figure of supernatural origin and powers. This completely contradicts everything we know about real people in the real world. If the character of jesus was based upon the life of a real person, we can confidently say that the real person was not the living incarnation of a god who performed daily magic. Thus any basis the character of jesus may have had in reality has been supplanted by the fictional figure built up in the christian mythos. I’ve never understood why atheists have such a hard time saying jesus was a myth, his description is no more realistic than that of hercules or beowulf but they are not given some historical benefit of the doubt.
Any casual glance at the writings of contemporary historians show no mention of jesus or his antics. Many major events in the bible have no historical record whatsoever, herod killing the infants of jerusalem, the supposedly massive gathering at the sermon on the mount, the events surrounding jesus execution and resurrection. The bible mentions that jesus had huge following of poets and scribes, but no written records of his existence can be found before 70AD.
I feel confident that the basics of the christian story about jesus was started and largely spread by Saul of Tarsus between 40-60AD. It wasn’t until several years later when these early cults gained enough popularity that they started writing down their stories in 70-90AD. From there the texts would be added to, edited, and occasionally completely rewritten by the official church over the next few centuries.
neilgodfrey says
This.
I think the evidence is fairly strong that a person known as Jesus who preached a reforming of Jewish faith did in fact live and die by crucifixion during what is now the early years of the CE. Surely there were many itinerant preachers who traveled with a band of followers during that time, but only one has really come down to us over 2000 years, with the exception of a couple of later Jewish rabbis.
In addition, there is attestation of a Jesus, who was crucifed and had followers who were called “Christians” in at least three secular writings, one be Tacitus and I believe Josephus and perhaps Seutonius. While none of these writers did “history” in the way we do, and thus we can’t conclusively accept their comments, all historians use their works to piece together the history of the times along with other archaeological findings. I see no particular reason to negate their statements.
I am suspicious of any agnostic or atheist who denies the existence of Jesus as a living person solely based on the lack of good historical information, since believing he existed in the flesh doesn’t mean you must believe he was God, nor that he rose from the dead. These are theological arguments and not subject generally speaking of hard proofs. They are matters of faith rather than of fact.
it is hard indeed to conclude that he did not exist, since it is impossible to concoct a scheme by which literally billions today still follow his teachings. Something so shocked and amazed his followers that they gave up everything to preach his teachings. And that cannot be denied.
Something makes Scientologists teach the words of L Ron Hubbard. Something makes Mormons teach the word of Joseph Smith. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t been comprehensively scammed.
…that also doesn’t mean that L. Ron Hubbard or Joseph Smith didn’t exist.
No, but I can show you direct evidence that they did. Jesus? None.
“Something so shocked and amazed his followers that they gave up everything to preach his teachings. And that cannot be denied.”
This has happened over and over again throughout history. So what? And the fact that his particular sect is the one that remained and grew has a great deal more to do with politics in the late Roman empire than anything else. Do you know how many religious ‘reformist’ sects popped up during the Egyptology craze of the late 1800′s? Dozens, if not hundreds. Two of them survive to this day: the LDS, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Why these two out of all the dozens that existed at the time? Who can say. But I doubt you’d agree that their continued existence is an argument for the truth of their message.
But you aren’t using this to support the divinity of Jesus, merely his existence, so I will address that particular point.
There’s a fairly good argument to be made that an actual king is behind the name Gilgamesh. Stories of his exploits drove religious and political thought for possibly thousands of years. These stories influenced early mythology all across the Mesopotamian region, including proto-Hebrew mythology. Now, does that mean Gilgamesh was a god-king who discovered the secret of immortality?
The fact that an actual human existed as the seed crystal for mythology tells us almost nothing about the person themselves. We only know the myths that grew up around them.
So, was there an itinerant Jewish rabbit preaching an apocalyptic message at exactly the time when the Jews were most taken with such messages? I think that’s extremely likely. Does the mythology that sprang up around him tell us anything about who he actually was, or what he actually taught? Almost certainly no.
“So, was there an itinerant Jewish rabbit”
I think you’re right Ty, that is unlikely!
“What, behind the rabbit?”
“No, it _IS_ the rabbit!”
In addition, there is attestation of a Jesus, who was crucified and had followers who were called “Christians” in at least three secular writings, one be Tacitus and I believe Josephus and perhaps Seutonius.
Check the dates. Josephus was born in 37 BCE. Tacitus born 56 BCE. Suetonius born ~ 70 BCE. There is no way that any of those gentlemen ever met the alleged historical Jesus H. Christ. The only thing they could report on was the existence of an early Christian church, which is not controversial, and which is not the question.
So stop lying, I hear there’s a commandment against it.
I am suspicious of any agnostic or atheist who denies the existence of Jesus as a living person solely based on the lack of good historical information
You are suspicious of people who hold to standards of evidence. Thank you for revealing that about yourself. Now excuse me while I carefully edge away from the crazy person.
Uhh, do you mean CE, or are you arguing for the existence of a church before the posited birth of the existence of Jesus?
Nope, he did not exist.
Guys!Jesus Christ is real,He is our saviour.He die for us and He set us free for hell.
Guys,one day when your time is come (die).Eternal fire is waiting for you and there will be no way back. No world can explain your sorrow.
JESUS IS THE SON OF GOD. HE IS KING of kings and HE IS MY SAVIOUR.
CAPSLOCK FOR THE LOSE.
He’s YOUR savior not MY savior. So why should I CARE?
I’m gonna burn anyway.
So, this magical being loves me so much that he will send me to eternal fire if I disobey.
Sounds like a dictator to me.
And what is your place passing judgement? How do you know that no world can explain our sorrow while we burn in hell? Sounds like someone is filling you with BS to have some sort of control over your thoughts by using fear. Psychopaths and Con-artists do this. I am not trying to sound harsh or crass but seriously.
Also, Jesus died to set us free from hell…? So, God is either sadistic or plain lazy. So why did people prior to Jesus go to hell anyway? Oh yeah, Adam and Eve screwed up everything! Eating from the tree of knowledge in which God made and placed it right under their damn noses. He did not what them to eat from it which would give them the power to know the truth. Knowledge is being linked to evil in this story and that is why you live in fear today. You are just afraid of the truth and the truth is, there is no God, there is no Jesus.
To borrow from Fred Sanford, “You big DUMMY!”
Safe money that magic, zombie jesus is a work of fiction. Was there someone named jesus preaching around judea during the first century? I think Hitchens have a point that there will be no reason to invent the whole fake census to move him to Bethlehem so the character can be molded to fit into a bunch of completely irrelevant old testament prophecies. Obviously the actual person (or persons) that form the basis of the jesus character didn’t make that much of an impression at the time since apparently no one noticed and considered him/them to be interesting enough to record.
The simple answer:
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/
Is and was and is to come…
Who, Arthur, the Once and Future King?
faith
belief that is not based on proof:
The only proof, that I have witnessed, of anyone who even comes close to the christian myth of Jesus Christ was Dr. Martin Luther King. He preached the power of truth and love. In 2,000 years from now will the million man march turn into the story of the 80 billion, flying angel army that saved the world from Xenu? I think not.
Like the history of ancient Greece, we have uncovered many facts of actual events and we also understand their myth. But we admit that the stories of Hephaestus and Aphrodite, for example, are a representation of human emotion. The story of Jesus is the same in nature.
I urge any Christian to read some Chinese history and myth, before and during the so-called era of Christ. You may be enlightened to find stories similar to that of your Messiah. But that may be to enticing for you, like the Tree of Knowledge in Eden. Compare that story to, “The Judgement of Paris”. It is all myth and exciting indeed.
Pip, Pip, Cherrio
As a rabbi, a wise-man, sure, he could have existed.
As depicted in the bible (i.e. as a demigod, performing magicks/miracles, bouncing back from being crucified), notsomuch.
I see him as a symbol, more than anything else. He was, for his time, a countercultural guru, and is said to have spoken much on the “virtues” of love and compassion for your fellow travelers.
Ironically, his most vocal devotees, the ones who scream the loudest about “Satan” and “evil”, are the LEAST like he was — they’re all about “what’s in it for ME,” which is, uh… pretty damn Satanic.
This is really two questions in one.
If you mean to ask, did the Gospel-Jesus — who roamed around healing people, walking on water, raising the dead, forcing demons into swine and driving them off a cliff, raising Cain in the Temple, rising from the dead, etc. — exist, the answer is a definite “no.” That’s it. A plain, simple “no.”
If you mean to ask, did some man once live, whose true life was magnified and distorted by legend and mythmaking into what we know as the Gospel-Jesus — but whose actual life was unlike that — then the answer is, “maybe.”
I say “maybe,” because there is no way to rule it out. But barring some extraordinary discovery somewhere in the Levant, the fact is that any historical record of a non-Gospel “historical Jesus” has been hopelessly trampled by the aforementioned Christian legends and mythmaking. Some scholars, e.g. the Jesus Seminar, have attempted to separate the Gospel-Jesus and some unknown “historical Jesus” said and did, but these efforts are all, ultimately, guesswork.
My own guess is that there might have been someone — likely an ethnic Jew from Galilee — who did live in the early 1st century and about whom stories were told, which later became the Jesus we know. But I’m nowhere near sure of that. There are way too many aspects of him which are just too mythically-oriented.
For instance, the very name “Jesus.” It is simply too convenient and symbolic! It’s the same name as that of Joshua, Moses’ successor. If someone were trying to establish a “new age” of Judaism … an age to follow the era of the “Mosaic Law” … what better name to select for this would-be reformer, than that of Moses’ own successor?
Then again, some of the stories that are told about Jesus are remarkably consistent, even from disparate sources. This consistency suggests a common source, and that, in turn, suggests there was a single person who originated those stories.
In any event, we have centuries of Christian mythmaking and historical revisionism to thank for the indefinite answer to the second form of the question.
I think the main thing to point out in this discussion is that it is irrelevant whether he existed or not. The mystery is what draws the xians in. Since there is no concrete proof that Jesus ever existed, they are free to create him in their minds as whatever they would like. I would actually love to find detailed record that a quite normal man named Jesus existed sometime around 30 AD. Then what? Where’s the mystery now? Of course the rabid followers would still be there, but the ‘excitement’ and the fantasy of it all would no longer exist for many. As for us, we don’t care; mostly because we have not invested anything emotionally into the story. We would probably just laugh to ourselves and go about our day.
Christians don’t want to find proof as much as we are indifferent to it.
We restrict ourselves to interpretation and reinterpretation of ancient writings. Reality is filtered through the writings like a layer of fat hanging over our eyes. It doesn’t matter if Jesus existed. It’s a story in an ancient book. We must strip away the layer of fat (childhood brainwashing) in order to see true reality. Until that happens I have only two words to say: magic and alchemy.
Red or blue pill Vid?
Redefining irony as always, John C.
If by “did Jesus exist?” you mean did the character of Jesus as portrayed in one of the canonical Gospels exist as described, then certainly not. That is myth. But if you want to know whether someone with that name existed from about 4 or 6 BCE to 33 CE in Judea who went around preaching about the Kingdom of God – maybe, but there’s no evidence for such a person outside of the Gospels themselves. Paul’s letters were written before the earliest gospel Mark, and Paul apparently knew nothing of an historical Jesus of Nazareth. One of the better books summarizing the “non-existence” case is “The Jesus Puzzle” by Earl Doherty, for those that are interested in getting into the details of the Mythicist argument. Personally, I think Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, Moses, Abraham, Zarathustra…all of them were invented figures who belong in the same category as King Arthur. There are people who really want such figures to be true, and produce endless books about the “quest for the historical so-and-so,” but at the end of the day we might as well expect to find a map to Santa’s secret workshop at the North Pole.
“all of them were invented figures” I agree. What is striking is how many of the gods had similar traits – the virgin birth is extremely common as is rising from the dead after dying for mankind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNf-P_5u_Hw
I dunno, Jesus as a failed eschatological Jewish prophet seems more plausible than the Christ myth theory. I read the NT as one big scramble to reinterpret/spin Jesus’ unplanned death and embarrassing failed prophecies. As Schweitzer put it, the whole religion of Christianity is a delay of the parousia.
The idea that the gospels are a reinterpretive “spin” meant to rationalize away the death and/or disappearance of the original “Jesus” — as well as the failure of his and others’ apocalyptic visions — appears to be a common belief among scholars. Ehrman suggests it in Jesus, Interrupted, and implies that this view — or one like it — is a common one among New Testament scholars. From other things I’ve read, Ehrman seems to be correct about that.
The problem for “lay persons” not well-read on New Testament scholarship, aside from those by Ehrman (and for the most part only the ones he’s released in the last 5 or 6 years), works for the general reader are less likely to be explicit on this point. Burton Mack, in A Myth of Innocence, offers a similar view, for instance, but that’s a huge and scholarly book that the general reader wouldn’t be able to handle; it hasn’t been marketed to general readers in any event, so most lay readers don’t even know it exists, much less what it says.
(As an aside, Ehrman spends a good deal of time in J, I explaining that there is an ENORMOUS difference between what New Testament scholars have determined over the last c. 150 years and is now widely taught in seminaries around the western world, and what is taught to believers in the pews on Sundays. He doesn’t offer any explanation for why this is the case. He merely insinuates that a lot of preachers are teaching their congregations things they know, themselves, not to be true. I would like for him to have explained this, but he didn’t. Perhaps he plans another book which will cover that; it may be he was “setting up” his next publication by asking this question but not answering it. J, I itself appears to be just such a follow-up to his earlier Misquoting Jesus.)
Yes, I first learned about the hypothesis from Ehrman’s work actually, in his book Jesus: Apocolyptic Prophet of the New Millenium. It lead me to E.P. Sanders’ Jesus and Judaism, Dale Allison’s Jesus of Nazereth: Millenarian Prophet and Albert Schweitzer’s classic The Quest of the Historical Jesus, all of which I recommend. Reading those books against, say, the work of Earl Doherty or Robert Price (who I love, for other reasons) is illuminating. The apocolyptic Jesus fits the historical context perfectly. I wish more people would read this kind of scholarship instead of just the Christ myth websites.
Did Christopher Columbus exist? Did he discover America?
Does the Plymouth Rock exist? Is that where the Mayflower landed?
The existence of something or somebody doesn’t prove anything else. Jesus, a man, may have existed. I cannot have firsthand knowledge whether he did or did not. What we do have is the assumption by many that he existed, and the argument over whether or not he was the son of god. Many arguments assume his existence and why the events leading up to and following his crucifixion could not have been anything but an ordinary man’s life.
The process of turning a man into a legend seems pretty easy, as in the story-telling process, people are prone to agree they’ve seen the same. If you remember when you were young what a hero, for example, your grandfather was in his youth, as you were told by everyone alive who knew him when, before you were born, you are prone to believe it. Find out later he was kind of a rotten guy, a scoundrel, a philanderer, a drunkard, domestic abuser, a hateful person, an unfair boss, even someone telling you he was a hero can make all those flaws into heroic details, like he didn’t take any bull from nobody! He really cleaned up the riffraff and made no apologies. Embellishments on the retold stories can become “true,” and people don’t like to remember ill of the dead, and rather look on their flaws as genius if they were a large character around town. Someone who is a rotten person you wouldn’t like very much can still be made to be a hero.
I’m not saying Jesus was real, or not real, or a rotten person, or at least affected those around him positively, but the warmer memories people had of him could have excited the legend of an ordinary man easily. There is not enough calling Bullsh*t in the context of these stories: no, I don’t remember that guy at all; what are you talking about, that guy was a dick who made everyone’s life worse! It’s pretty much yeah, yeah, do you remember that one time, he fell in the pool and it looked like he was floating on top of the water? and We had no booze for the party so he took some jugs of water and brought them to his van and came back with enough wine for everyone. What a cool guy. By some years later, these stories turn into miracles, nobody wants to be the one to say that didn’t really happen so fantastically, it was just an illusion or something and make the storyteller look like a liar in front of everyone. The protocol of not embarrassing a dude in front of his friends overtakes the need to keep facts straight to the later audience. I often think in stories someone tells me “you had to be there,” what they’ve told me was kind of boring, so I don’t hold it against most people to pump it up so it’s still funny or interesting without having had to be there. Listen to how your own stories get grander over time, if they are still memorable enough for you to be retelling them 10 or 20 or 40 years after they happened.
You know, what someone said upthread, “big fish.” It doesn’t matter if Jesus was real if the process of oral history can be analyzed. The hero of the story is the hero. What makes him better than you or me? Uh, let’s make up stuff to grab your attention.
Actually, his name wasn’t Jesus, it was Brian and he was just a naughty boy. Haven’t you seen the movie?
I don’t believe in Jesus, but I do believe in Josh. I believe that there was an apocalyptic preacher in first century Judea named Yeshua. I believe he probably went by the short form Yesus. He did this much like someone named Joshua would use the short form Josh. I think this person did none of the miraculous things in the NT and was in no way the son of God. He was just Josh.
Maybe he was just joshin’.
Having read around the issue for a while, I have to say the only real argument is “maybe, it’s impossible to know for sure.”
The historical sources on Jesus are so sketchy as to be unusable, and most of them are composed of information from the early church, so should be treated with extreme skepticism. The only independent source refers to man who’s name isn’t Jesus but might be vaguely similar to Christ (if you squint at it sideways) who was executed for sedition within a couple of decades of the supposed event. Treat that as you will.
I don’t, however, believe that Jesus was an invention of Paul, and mostly I believe that because of the Q document – the hypothetical proto-gospel that Matthew and Luke are supposed to share. I’m reasonably convinced that there was some person or persons whose teachings became the foundation of the New Testament. It’s obvious that there was a lot of embellishment and hagiography around this prophet to the point that it’s impossible to know anything at all about him (or even if he is one person), but I remain reasonably convinced that the christian teachings predate Paul.
Yes, I believe Jesus existed, not so much because of what the Bible says, but because of the non-Christian, non-Jewish historians’ documentation of his existence, of which there is plenty.
Such as?
Now this is going to be intresting …
Not it’s not. It’s going to be the long, boring wait of the no reply. Same as happens *every single time* some Christian makes a bland assertion about supposed “evidence” and gets called on it.
… but you have to look at the evidence with an “open mind” i.e. believe that it’s true, and then you will see that it’s true.
Pretty certain you’re wrong about that Jim…
Ooh! OOh! I know! I know! Josephus, right? Right?
He can’t be referring to Josephus, as Josephus was Jewish.
Oh, drat. Well, who the heck could he be referring to? Not that we’re likely to get an answer from “Jim.”
He must be referring to Tacitus, who in the Annals wrote more than a century after the supposed fact of Jesus about the great fire of Rome, and in parenthetical mentioned a guy named Christos who was crucified in Jerusalem as the supposed founder of the sect that Nero blamed for the fire.
Can you all start calling me a “prophet,” since I predicted that “Jim” would never give us a response? Tomorrow, I’ll have the winning numbers for today’s lottery.
If you’re correct, then please provide a list of these references. Please make sure they are all contemporaneous with Jesus … i.e. either written in his own time (that would be best), or later, but by someone who was alive and (hopefully) of adult age, in the time Jesus was preaching.
Since you used the plural, and because you mentioned “non-Jewish, non-Christian historians,” I expect to have more than one of these references, written by people who were neither Jewish nor Christian.
When you get that list, please let us all know. Because honestly, I’ve never heard of any such thing. And I’ve been studying the origins of Christianity — both as a believer and as a non-believer — for decades now.
While most Christians are taught that Jesus created the Christian
religion, this is not so. The people who created Christianity are
the people who wrote the scriptures. It is commonly accepted that
the gospels were written sometime after 70 CE. The question is,
Why did it take so long? A lot happened during this period in
this corner of the world.
First we have the Pisonian Conspiracy in which members of the the
powerful Roman Piso family conspire to assassinate the Emperor
Nero and to create a new Jewish religion to compete with the
Jewish religion of the Messianic Jewish Movement. They are
discovered and executed.
Next we have Apollonius of Tyana making 2 trips to India. On his
first trip he receives 9 manuscripts in Taxila which form the
basis for the 9 Pauline Epistles. On his second trip to farther
India he receives 4 documents about the seasons of life of the
Indian Christ of the Tamil people which form the basis for the 4
gospels. It is interesting that the Pauline Epistles are the
earliest Chistian writings and make no reference to Jesus of
Nazareth. Neither do other early writngs such as ‘The Shepherd of
Hermes’ or ‘The Epistle of Barnabas.’ The reason for this is that
these texts were written prior to the time when the gospels were
written. Now, we know that the epistle of Paul supposedly date
back to the 50s. Therefore, as of that decade no one had ever
heard of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is only during the last decade of the first century and the
beginning of the second that Jesus Christ is mentioned in quotes
from St. Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Rome. They mention
his name, but know little about him. It was also at this time
that the famous apologetics quotes from Suetonius and Tacitus
were actually written. This is also the time that Josephus wrote
the infamous ‘Testimonium Flavianum.’ All of these quotes were
written after the gospels had already been composed.
So, there you have it. Prior the gospels being written there is
not one single mention of Jesus Christ. Only after the gospels
were written do we hear the name Jesus Christ mentioned. To learn
more about how the Romans subverted the teachings of Yeshu and
the Nazoreans and proclaimed them the revelations of their godman
Jesus Christ visit: Nazoreans
Re: “Prior the gospels being written there is not one single mention of Jesus Christ.”
Except for the mentions of “Christ Jesus” / “Jesus Christ” in the seven genuine Pauline epistles, all of which were written in the 50s CE. And except for the sources of the synoptic gospels, which must have been in existence before 70 CE.
I agree. That is absolutely true, but the Jesus Christ mentioned by Paul is not Jesus of Nazareth. The Jesus Paul writes bout has no life. Although Paul mentions Jesus 230 times in the epistles, he only mentions that he he was crucified once and “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.—1 Corinthians 2:2, but unfortunately counters this by saying that he was hung from a tree, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:—Galatians 3:13. Acts of the Apostles agrees with the latter. How is it that, during the 50s, Paul who says that he knew James the Just and writes and preaches a lot of supernatural Christianity knows nothing at all about the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
Sure, it’s debatable whether or not the “Christ Jesus” mentioned by Paul in the 50s is the exact same person written of in the gospels near the end of the 1st century, I was just saying that it’s not true there is “no mention” of “Christ Jesus” prior to the gospels. And I was also pointing out that the gospels we have are all derivative documents drawn from earlier sources. While we do not have those sources per se, we know they existed, so we cannot truthfully say that the gospels themselves had invented mention of “Christ Jesus.”
As for the reference to “hanging” being something distinct from “crucifixion,” the Greek verb used in Galatians, κρεμάννυμι, indeed meant “to hang,” but this word can have a little wider meaning than specifically “to hang by the neck from a rope.” A good parallel is in English where one might say one is “hanging a picture on a wall,” but one really means that one has tacked it onto a wall. Figuratively, someone who has been crucified can, indeed, be said to have been “hung on a tree” or even “hung from a tree.” It’s not an exact description but given the wider meaning, it can fit.
What happened here is that Paul is trying to wedge the scenario of Jesus’ crucifixion into Jewish scripture, by comparing it to Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which does speak of those who were “hanged” as being cursed (and the Septuagint translation of it used the exact same Greek verb). The Deuteronomy passage, based on its context, clearly refers to “hanging by the neck from a rope,” however, Paul took advantage of the fact that this specific word had a wider meaning, to make it seem as though it referred to Jesus and his crucifixion.
Thus, Paul elsewhere mentions Jesus as having been “crucified,” yet in Galatians 13 he used the verb “to hang.” This does not mean he thought Jesus had been hanged, as opposed to having been crucified; he is, rather, using the ambiguous and general meaning of a word to shoehorn the crucifixion scenario into Old Testament passages. Nor does it mean Paul was conflicted on the matter.
Other Christians did much the same thing, later; they also did so either imprecisely, by taking advantage of ambiguity, or by outright inventing Old Testament passages that Jesus supposedly had fulfilled.
Actually, Christ Himself IS Christ-ianity. It’s a LIFE (His) not a philosophy, not a doctrine, not a religion or a church, but He Himself is the True Offer.
No, I don’t believe in a historical Jesus at all. No historian during his alleged life ever mentions him at all. Not to mention (as above mentioned) that all that was ever written about him is hearsay. And you’ll find that most people who believe he did exist never really researched it.