The thing is that compared to other historical people we kid of have similar evidence. Like we have records of Socrates existing and we have records of some Joshua existing.
The difference is that nobody claims that Socrates was a fantastical god being who defied death, which is a extraordinary claim, we just say he was a very smart guy, we se very smart guys on a daily basis, nothing special with that so we can just believe it and even if we are wrong it has no real life implications.
For the Joshua guy, that's quite a different story. The claims about him are extraordinary and need extraordinary evidence. But we only have normal evidence. If the claims about him were true it would contradict almost everything we think we know about the universe, how it behaves, etc.
So again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
The difference is that nobody claims that Socrates was a fantastical god being who defied death,
To use a more modern example, pretty much everyone agrees that Grigori Rasputin was a real person who played a crucial role in the court of the last Czar of Russia.
But there are some positively wild and unexplainable stories that have a decent amount of corroborating evidence that they happened. The story about him healing the prince via a phone call sounds like actual magic. However we all know magic isn’t real, there is definitely some kind of logical explanation. But that explanation is lost to time.
So where do historians land on Rasputin? Well, there was definitely a guy called Rasputin. Some of the stories about him are true. Some are probably false or exaggerated. There isn’t even a consensus on what colour the dude’s eyes were. But that doesn’t mean we dispute his existence.
nobody claims that Socrates was a fantastical god being who defied death
Socrates literally claimed that he was a channel for a revelatory holy spirit and that because the spirit would not lead him astray that he was ensured to escape death and have a good afterlife because otherwise it wouldn’t have encouraged him to tell off the proceedings at his trial.
Also, there definitely isn’t any evidence of Joshua in the LBA, or evidence for anything in that book, and a lot of evidence against it.
We have a lot more contemporay primary sources for the existence of Socrates than we have of Jesus (of which the number of contemporary primary sources is 0).
how do you have sources for no? I mean I guess you can link to wikipedia and point out all the evidence is just some third party writings or such I guess.
I like to picture my Jesus as a desert hippie that people liked and told tall tales of in order to give people living in that harsh environment some hope and meaning.
I like to think of Jesus with like giant eagles wings and singing lead vocals for lynyrd skynyrd with like an Angel Band, and I’m in the front row, and I’m hammered drunk.
IIRC, the religion didn’t get anywhere is Palestine after Jesus supposedly died and it wasn’t until decades later that it picked up in and around Greece thanks to Paul, but no one was around that saw any of the events attributed to Jesus - it was all heresay.
I mean the bible is how many pages and how much of it actually takes place during Jesus’s life? And what is the timespan of the small part that does? Like a year? And the 4 gospels that talk about it are all rehashings of the same stories (more or less) and even contradict each other at times.
That’s a story with a lot of gaps and plot holes to base a belief system around - and that doesn’t even include all the baggage and hate that comes along with it.
People nowadays lose their mind and make death threats to the creators of stories that don’t fix or create new plot holes in canon. And we’re supposed to smile, nod, and happily accept one of the worst constructed stories ever just because some old white men that live the opposite way they tell us to live say so?
Skimmed through some of these, like this which isn’t even a contradiction.
Even here you can see that it even shows a verse where Jesus drinks the vinegar in two gospels yet claim it’s s contradiction because He didn’t receive the wine.
Luke and Matthew were referring to acquiring or buying a staff, Mark was referring to simply going as you are. The emphasis was that Jesus didn’t want them to excessively prepare for the journey, but simply go out with the sandals they were wearing and a walking stick they had on them.
You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don’t wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock this afternoon… with nail polish.
I’m by no means an expert but I was briefly obsessed with comparative religion over a decade ago and I don’t think anyone has given a great answer, I believe my answer is correct but I don’t have time for research beyond checking a couple of details.
As a few people have mentioned there is little physical evidence for even the most notable individuals from that time period and it’s not reasonable to expect any for Jesus.
In terms of literary evidence there is exactly 1 historian who is roughly contemporary and mentions Jesus. Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus mentions him twice, once briefly telling the story of his crucifixion and resurrection. The second is a mention in passing when discussing the brother of Jesus delivering criminals to be stoned.
I think it is reasonable to conclude that a Jewish spiritual leader with a name something like Jesus Christ probably existed and that not long after his death miracles are being attributed to him.
It is also worth noting the historical context of the recent emergence of Rabbinical Judaism and the overabundance of other leaders who were claimed to be Messiahs, many of whom we also know about primarily(actually I think only) from Josephus.
The part mentioning Jesus’s crucifixion in Josephus is extremely likely to have been altered if not entirely fabricated.
The idea that the historical figure was known as either ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ is almost 0% given the former is a Greek version of the Aramaic name and the same for the second being the Greek version of Messiah, but that one is even less likely given in the earliest cannonical gospel he only identified that way in secret and there’s no mention of it in the earliest apocrypha.
In many ways, it’s the various differences between the account of a historical Jesus and the various other Messianic figures in Judea that I think lends the most credence to the historicity of an underlying historical Jesus.
One tends to make things up in ways that fit with what one knows, not make up specific inconvenient things out of context with what would have been expected.
In terms of literary evidence there is exactly 1 historian who is roughly contemporary and mentions Jesus
Misinformation.
There’s Tacitus’s Annals (year 117), Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (93-94), Mara bar Serapion’s letter to his son.
Seutonius (Lives of the Twelve Cæsars) and Pliny wrote about the conflict between the Romans and the followers of Christ (or Chrestus) around that era.
You are the one who is doing the misinforming. All of the sources you mention, except Josephus, were written up to more than a century after his supposed existence. With Josephus being written around half a century after his existence.
And as mentioned, the specific quotes from Josephus are of a dubious nature.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt here but both Suetonius and Pliny are talking about Christians in the 2nd century, Tacitus speaks about Christ only in the context of Nero blaming Christians for the great fire. These are literary evidence for the existence of Christians in the second century but are not direct literary evidence of the existence of Christ as an individual which was the question I was addressing.
I’d be delighted to be shown to be wrong but I believe my original post stands.
Before Jesus, many people were sanctified in the flesh in this way.Later, Jesus imitated the practices of his predecessors and added hype, and he became a legend after his death.
After reading that page, I strongly suspect that’s not him. It’s all based on statistical modeling, and it’s been heavily massaged. Even with that, they give it 1/600 odds (on the low end) of it being random chance, which those aren’t bad odds.
Apparently the inscriptions are partially illegible, so assuming it’s even correct their statistical model is based on the name Mariamne being Mary Magdelene (which is clearly not the name we remember her by) and being Jesus’s wife, Maria being the mother, and Jesus having a son, which we didn’t know about, named Judah, as well as a few other assumption that really do not feel like they should be making.
Even making a ton of assumptions, the odds are still not particularly convincing. It feels like something that can increase someone’s faith if they don’t question it, but if you examine it at all reveals how much people are reaching to prove what they already want to believe.
I’d have guess people who thought the tomb was for the Jesus would have their faith shaken by it since it would mean Jesus was married and had a kid, though there are some obscure Christian sects that have believed that.
This conclusion, while weakly supported by a statistical analysis of the names involved, is rejected by most archaeologists, theologians, linguistic and biblical scholars.
There’s a bunch of references for archaeologists debunking it.
I know you said “it might not be him” but I feel like that understates the weight of evidence against that possibility.
The respectable probability estimates range from astronomically unlikely to merely unlikely. In other words, we don’t have incontrovertible ways of calculating the probability.
While it’s not great or convincing evidence, it’s the only physical evidence I know about.
If you’re happy with this type of calculation then the probability that this tomb is that of biblical Jesus is (number of occupants) / (number of humans in that area at the time the tomb was built).
That’s not the real question though. The real question is rather are there any “real physical proof” that Jesus had literally anything special that is in itself being the “son of God” or anything related to religion.
Anybody (sadly) can be crucified, especially during a period where it is trendy. Anybody can walk through part of the desert. Anybody can organize a meal, give a speech, etc.
Even if it’s done exceptionally well, that does not make it special in the sense of being the proof of anything religious. We all have friends with unique talents, and social media helped us discovered that there are so many more of those around the entire world, but nobody in their right mind would claim that because Eminem can sing words intelligibly faster than the vast majority of people he is the son of “God”.
I also read a book about a decade ago (unfortunately didn’t write down notes about it so can’t find the name back) on the history of religion, from polytheism to monotheism, and it was quite interesting. If I remember correctly one way to interpret it was through the lens of religions maintaining themselves over time and space, which could include growing to a sufficient size in terms of devout adepts. The point being that veracity was not part of the equation.
Well, that’s the question if you want to believe in Christianity.
It’s nearly universally accepted that he is a historical figure, though there is little to no evidence of that. The OP is asking why is that the case with so little evidence. They (presumably) aren’t asking for a religious reason, just as an interest in history. If you are Christian and asking this question you are well past the point of no return for your faith
No, OPs question was perfectly fine, because it is necessary to stress the fact that we have not a single contemporary primary source that Jesus existed. So adding extra parameters is pretty pointless, since we cannot convincingly answer whether he actually existed, much less whether he was a religious figure. Scholars have reached a conjectural consensus that a Jesus in some form likely existed, but it is a consendus based on congecture and circumstantial evidence in the form of later secondary sources.
I had read that there were Roman census records that proved a Rabbi named Jesus did live at about the right time, but now I can’t find a source to back that up, so that’s probably bunk.
If you compare that with records we have for the likes of Alexander the Great though being 400 years later, it’s not that implausible. And you’d be discounting the Christian Gospels and Paul’s Epistles which were mere decades after Jesus
Interesting, what kind of records do we have from Alexander’s time? And yeah, I agree, the early gospels and the later Roman references probably indicate Rabbi named Jesus was crucified, but I don’t think that a secondary source or religious texts really meet OP’s criteria for, “physical proof.” (Although we probably don’t have, “physical proof,” for a lot of historical events we generally accept have happened).
Completely unlikely since no such census records are extant.
People who are jnfamilhar with the historiography are very much overestimating the amount of primary source material which exists from the Roman Empire, simply because historians have been very good at extracting information from the miniscule fraction (relative to the amount which was produced) of extant written sources we do have from the period.
There are no such records. Just having any extant census records from the Roman Empire would have pretty sensational, let alone some stemming from Judea at the supposed time of Jesus.
Yeah, that makes sense. I wish I could track down where I read this to figure out if it’s a bad source or I’m misremembering it. I may be mistaking Tacitus’ reference to Christ, but I don’t think it’s that. I distinctly remember reading about some sort of population record of a Rabbi named Jesus and thinking, “Wow, I’m surprised a record like that survived.” The problem is this was 10+ years ago, and search engines suck now, so I’ll never find it again.