There’s a bunch of old texts about a Jewish “prophet” called Jesus, who was gathering some followers. As far as I understand, there’s no really reason not to believe the person existed.
Then again, all the Jesus lore, there’s no reason to believe his miracles were real as those made no sense and there’s no real proof besides those same texts written after Jesse’s death
This. There is evidence that a preacher called Jesus existed, was crucified, and was well-regarded enough to start a following that persisted even after his death.
There isn’t, however, strong historical evidence for any of the magical parts of it.
The evidence isn’t even that strong, there i just aren’t that many people willing to risk becoming a pariah to dispute them.
If you are a Christian, there is no doubt Jesus existed. Any oblique reference to a rabbi who was persecuted hundreds years ago is considered evidence that Jesus existed. But no contemporaneous documentation exists.
If you’re not a Christian, debunking all of those vague references that might be proof of a Jewish leader named Jesus just isn’t particularly important, won’t persuade anyone who believes Jesus was(is) God, and will paint a target on your back for terrorists.
Wait… you mean to tell me there’s not a collective of atheist Wikipedia writers that have dedicated their lives to the absence of religion and citing themselves on refuting evidence on Wikipedia?!?
Wouldn’t it be weird of every Wikipedia article on the historical validity of Jesus was written by Christian scholars that have dedicated their lives to their religion? It would be wild if they were just citing themselves in these Wiki articles in order to sell some books, wouldn’t it?
It’s weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.
I don’t feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.
Yeah there are plenty of historians who have done good work studying this and the academia is mostly settled. Not to say there’s no controversy, but there’s definitely an orthodox opinion.
I don’t feel compelled to argue an interpretation. The facts are well documented and their interpretations by experts available. What anyone chooses to do with these are of no real concern to me.
but then
It’s weird how many people in this thread are vaguely debating the validity of the historical research into this question when one person has posted a link to a well cited article on this very very heavily studied subject.
Well cited article aren’t proof of existenceof a man. Is spiderman real if enough people cite the comics? A group of influential people could gather and make their own circle of these myths and present it as a fact. And it isn’t fucking new.
Religions and all their influence could force a lot of heavily studied subject to be skewed for their benefit. Hell, there were studies that were treated as standard making sugar and alcohol heavily beneficial for human beings. And we’re talking about a person.
In my experience, when it comes to debating the validity of religion, people tend to get far more emotional than other topics. People who are normally level-headed and quite logical tend to completely lose their ability to think rationally. And I mean both the people who argue for religion and against it.
I shouldn’t bother responding to this, but I have to point out that this weird assumption that scholars of Christianity are all Christian partisans seems pretty similar to people who say that climatologists are all biased in favor of a global warming hoax.
You don’t think anyone goes into studying a field to challenge the orthodoxy? That’s the fastest way to get famous. Even if the rest of your field hates you, you can make an incredibly lucrative career out of being “the outsider”. I literally linked to a collection of experts who agree with you.
If you don’t believe the experts, I guess it’s fine. But it’s weird when people use expertise on a subject as proof of bias to discredit expertise. It’s just such a silly thing to do.
I think it’s a weird to assume the wiki-link that you posted is in support of the “Christ Myth Theory” (as they call it).
Read the contents of the wiki link you sent and check all of the citations, you’ll see that the Christian Scholars that contributed to writing the article aim to dismiss the theory by citing their own books.
There were a lot of people that shared that name, and a lot of people were crucified at that time.
That implies each source says: “A man called Jesus was crucified”. The article you provided (if you read it) should have told you otherwise.
Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, year 93-94: “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”
Tacitus’s Annals, year 117: Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus
I didn’t provide any article. I read the one you linked.
In this most recent response, you are annotating sources from 93, and 117. Those years are notably (at minimum) 60 years after the supposed resurrection; and as such are not first hand accounts.
They very likely was someone named Jesus, because there were many people with that name. There was very likely someone named Jesus that was crucified, because many people were crucified. There’s 0 evidence or recorded documentation that a resurrection ever happened. That’s the big one.
You suck ass at reading. The title of this post is asking about “Jesus Christ,” which we all know to mean the son of God and the guy that resurrected after 3 days.
The title of this post is asking about “Jesus Christ,” which we all know to mean the son of God and the guy that resurrected after 3 days.
lol no… this thread is not talking about anything like that hahaha. Read it.
Obviously people don’t come back from the dead or transform into cheddar cheese; we don’t need historical research to tell us that.
His given name was יֵשׁוּעַ or Yeshua, which is Jesus in one speech-type, عيسى (ʿIsà) in another, as well as a lot of other variants.
‘Christus’ in Latin seems to refer to the same person; Tacitus wrote “called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus”
What do you think of what Ehrman says here at 1h45m25s that the mythicist theory isn’t taken seriously by the academy because it’s mostly pushed by people who seem eager to dunk on religion.
Its easy to put bones together and say that it existed but there’s no way to guarantee “these are certified bones of Jim the stegosaurus, religious figure”
The Egyptians also mummified their dead, preserving the corpses into the modern era. “Older” ≠ “more evidence”
We have loads more records from the Romans than from the Norse for example, even though the Norse came later, because the Norse didn’t keep as many records as the Romans.
That’s because there weren’t multiple people around to write down what they saw. You’re confusing paleontology and history. They have very different standards for proof.
There are tons of historical figures for whom we have no physical evidence. But we have tons of written evidence from people who all experienced those people.
You won’t find fossilized Jesus, he apparently got resurrected and became wine & cookies, so some people started eating him on Sundays. And he doesn’t want us to say fuck, or shit, or do it in the butt. But that’s not really related to the question.
That’s prehistory. Everything we know about history comes from written accounts. Historians study written documents and argue whether or not the available evidence makes it more likely that something (or someone) was real or fiction.
Most historians agree that there was a Jewish man named Jesus (yehoshua), who preached in Judea and the Galilee in the early first century, who gained followers and was crucified by Rome. There are also historians who examine the same evidence and conclude it is more likely that no such person existed, because that’s how academia works.
The point is that you are asking the wrong question sort of. If we only accepted physical remnants of someone or their life to prove they exist, Jesus wouldn’t be the only one we would have to throw out.
Not to say I know how to prove stuff historically, it does sort of seem like magic sometimes. If we found out today that carbon dating was off by a magnitude I would not be shocked, so that’s all the faith I have in it due to my bad understanding of it.
Archaeology in good at giving us clues about the living thing. References to people existing is almost purely based on text people wrote. The proof would be someone writing down “Chrestos, popular among the poor was crucified for his crimes for spreading heresy” as a contemporary. But since the earliest reference we have is a century after his death it’s not necessarily accurate or true.
Literary proof is, but also doesn’t exist for Jesus Christ.
There’s a few mentions of just a “Jesus” but its not like no one else was named Jesus, and those don’t really make any mention of him being remarkable in any way.
I have a pet peeve about this phrase. A) yes there is. B) that’s not the standard, e.g. it would be incorrect to say there’s no evidence aliens abduct and probe people: there are eyewitness accounts
I don’t believe that, and since it’s impossible to show evidence something doesn’t exist, the people claiming evidence Jesus existed is gonna have to do some linking…
that’s not the standard
You mean evidence?
Evidence isn’t the standard for things existing?
What exactly is the standard in your mind for whether a historical figure existed?
Quality of the evidence matters. I’m personally not a historical expert on the topic and in such situations, I’m inclined to believe whatever the people who are experts say - and as far as I gather, most experts are in the “Jesus was a real historical person”-camp.
What exactly is the standard in your mind for whether a historical figure existed?
Hard evidence has never been the standard for proof that a historical figure existed. Corroborating records are. It’s great if you can find some hard evidence, but if that was the standard then most people in history wouldn’t have any historical proof of their existence. And even when there is a corpse, we still rely on burial records to be certain that the corpse is who we think it is. Or if there are letters, we can’t confirm they were written by the same person we think they were.
Like a third of the bible as well as several contemporary documents all point to the existence of a guy named something like Joshua (which we now translate as Jesus) who traveled around Palestine preaching and was crucified in around 33AD. There are plenty of historical figures who we mostly agree existed despite having approximately the same amount of proof as for Jesus.
“There’s a Jesus that got crucified, but no mention about him being able to perform miracles”
We know this from somewhat later annals. The texts are closer in the timeline to the historical figure than in the case of Diarmait mac Cerbaill, and are more numerous.
We share a general contempt for Christians and Christianity.
What are you driving at bringing up the semantics of ‘contemporary’??
The only time that word was used was when you said (incorrectly), “That is contemporary literary evidence of his existence.” – the annals are centuries after the 6th-century reign of Diarmait at Tara. We don’t have any 6th-century manuscripts. The situation in the Roman Empire is quite a bit better, lots of texts.
Would you say that a person called Caius Vipstanus existed because Tacitus mentioned him in his annals a few decades later? Isn’t that valid inference from the text?
There’s a Jesus that got crucified, but no mention about him being able to perform miracles
Obviously miracles aren’t real. I wasn’t claiming otherwise. We’re talking about whether or not the person Jesus existed, not if magic is real.
It sounds like we agree
I don’t think any of it was written till decades after he supposedly died tho…
Okay but it was written by people who claim they were there and met him personally.
To borrow your asinine LOTR analogy, it is more like you are claiming Thorinn Oakenshield never existed simply because Bilbo only wrote “There and Back Again” after he got home from memory.
A bunch of the books in the new testament are letters written by Jesus’s followers. We can’t prove whether they really are that, but they all agree that a dude named Jesus existed. If a bunch of people all wrote about a guy they knew, and most of the details match, that guy probably was real.
Yeah I’m not arguing with that. You’re just nitpicking semantics because you have lost this argument. Literally the very next sentence after the one you quoted I qualified that by saying it’s debatable.
I don’t have a horse in this race, but man, let it drop. The person who’s fighting for ridiculous improbabilities here is you. Nobody you’re arguing with in this thread is even making a claim that Magic Jesus existed. Just that the man named Jesus who is talked about by the early Christians likely existed (which is scholarly consensus, not even a niche claim). They’re specifically not claiming that the fantastical claims made by the early Christians about that man are true.
If your only requirement is that a man once existed by the name of Jesus and was crucified, then the bar is on the floor. Jesus was not a rare name, and the Romans crucified many, many people. It is not out of the realm of possibility that these two common data points would overlap and give us a crucified Jesus.
Is there proof that it was THE Jesus though? Do we have corroborating evidence of a man travelling the countryside with his posse, changing the minds and hearts of the masses?
I feel like there’s some room for Occam’s Razor here. Is it more likely that dozens of people got together and agreed to start a cult centred around a fictional person that they were all going to agree existed? Or that the guy actually did exist? Like why would all the people who say they followed him around lie about that but also be on the same page about so many details of him?
Like, we know the posse existed, so why is it a stretch that the guy they all went on to turn into a religion was really there in the middle of it all?
To be clear (and I can’t believe I have to say this, but there are some idiots in this thread) I’m not claiming magical miracles are real, just that there was a real dude in the middle of that posse that those followers went on to turn into a religion.
Right. I think we’re in agreement. There was a historical Diarmait. There was a historical Jesus. We know this from textual sources dated a little later than the historical figures.
His life was written about while it happened in the Irish Annals…
We have no Irish texts as old as Diarmait’s reign. CELT date the Orgguin trí mac Diarmata Mic Cerbaill “Created: Possibly in the Old Irish period. Date range: 700–900?” So we rely on things written 100+ years after the historical figure. And that’s referring to when it was originally written; it’s know from later transcriptions; the oldest physical Irish manuscript we have (Lebor na hUidre) is around 1100. So how do we know there was a historical Diarmait?
In the case of Yeshu the Nazarene, it’s similar, though some texts are a little nearer his historical period than in Diarmait’s case.
Like, there’s lots of information about Bilbo Baggins in Lotr, that doesn’t mean it was written in the third age of Middle Earth homie
The conceit of the LOTR appendices is that Lord of the Rings, as published in English, is really just the Red Book that Bilbo writes at the end. Dr. Tolkien merely found the manuscript somewhere and has graciously translated it from Third Age common language into English for the benefit of us modern people.
several contemporary documents all point to the existence of a guy named something like Joshua
IIRC, there’s really only a single mention of a possible link to someone of this name that was crucified at the supposed time, and that single mention happened at least 50 (maybe 100?) years later, and there’s evidence that this passage was added even later.
So I didn’t think it’s true that there are “several contemporary documents” like you claimed…
Of course not. There are millions of examples of false claims for which there is more than zero evidence. e.g. I can claim I know which stocks will rise tomorrow, and point to various data of times I’ve been right. You can’t correctly say “There is zero evidence Frightful Hobgoblin is prescient about stock movements”.
There often exists evidence of two mutually incompatible propositions. This is basics.
If you want to research the historicity of Jesus it’s easily done. If you want to argue on the internet… you know what they say about that.
I will say that while evidence existing isn’t definitive proof, the total lack of evidence would be convincing (in the other direction). That said, evidence does exist in this case, so
If no evidence whatsoever for a claim exists, then there is no reason to favor that claim. This is an effectively rare situation, and basically only applies to things someone has made up whole cloth just now.
Likewise, the existence of some evidence is not necessarily definitive “proof” of a claim, merely enough of a reason to consider it further (such as considering alternative explanations or how well said evidence matches what we might expect)
In this case, there is evidence that somebody named Jesus may have existed, and however ideal that evidence may or may not be, it is about the amount of evidence we would expect to find of any given figure from his time.
AFAIK most historians/scholars agree that Jesus was a real person (even if a lot of the Bible’s claims about what he did are not true). But I’m not a historian. What are you basing your opinion on?
So we have to differentiate between what is the actual Gospel and life of Jesus and what the more creative parts of the churches invented on top of it over time.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. John 8:58
Which is from one of the original 4 gospels. Apparently there’s evidence of it being written as early as 70AD. There’s a couple other quotes I found in a link some other person linked in this thread but this one seems most direct.
I think this is a terminological confusion. The original Gospel as in the life and teaching of Jesus, that got lost as it wasn’t documented in his lifetime.
The four gospels that made the choice are as you said collections written later. And there were many more Gospels that the early church decided not to put into the bible. On top of that there is the issue how those gospels got translated multiple times and each translation inadvertently adds a layer of interpretation.
Alright but he quoted a gospel from 70AD, and the idea that in the “true gospel” he wasn’t the son of god or never claimed to be is a concept present in opposing religions like Islam first written down 500 years later, which famously mistranslated Marry with “she flowed like a river” instead of “she was chaste” when the region was constantly caught between Phoenician based alphabets like Greek, Hebrew, multiple Arabics, and much later on Cyrillic.
The Roman’s artistic licenses aside, their accounts of history are the most reliable source on all of this.
Jesus as literal son of god was only established some 400 years later. And when later the records of the gospel got translated through multiple languages it seems very plausible to me, that under the assumption that Jesus should be the literal son of god, this sentence is supposed to be worded to confirm that. It is as easy as forgetting a half sentence like “HE said” or turn a third person into a first person form. Or to loose the context that he was announced already before Ibrahim etc.
Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that there was (most likely) an actual historical person who is the origin of these stories, i.e. Jesus. He’s probably not really as fantastical as the Bible would have you believe, but he did exist, as opposed to being just an entirely fictional character.
There exists documented proof in many bits of literature from around 200 BCE to around 100 CE of numerous different figures in what is called ‘Jewish Apocalypticism’, basically a small in number but persistent phenomenon of Jews in and around what was for most of that time the Roman province of Palestine, preaching that the end would come, that God or a Messiah would return or arise and basically liberate the region and install a Godly Kingdom, usually after or as part of other fantastical events.
Jesus was one of many of these Jewish Apocalypticists. Much like the rest of the movement’s key figures, they were wrong, and their lives were greatly exaggerated in either their writings or writings about them or inspired by them.
This seems to be the (extremely condensed) opinion of most Biblical Scholars.
There are a very small number of modern Biblical Scholars that are ‘Mythicists’ of some kind, who believe that Jesus was completely fictional and wholly invented by certain people or groups.
This is an unpopular view amongst scholars and historians of that time and region, as most believe it more plausible that Jesus was just another example of a radical Jewish Apocalyptic preacher, which again, was fairly common for roughly 300 years in that region.
Its like how if you go to a big city theres always that one guy with a megaphone preaching imminent doom. 99% of people think this is silly and ignore them, but tons of people know that people like them exist and do have small followings.
I’ve heard theories that key people probably had hallucinations of Jesus a few days after he was killed, which was the big thing that helped launch him from yet-another-apocalyptic-preacher to (eventually) God himself. I don’t know how well these are accepted, though.
This stems from the fact that, so far, the earliest dated written fragments we have from what is now the New Testament are some of the writings of Paul.
Paul was not one of the Apostles EDIT: Disciples, and it seems possible that, after persecuting earlier, existing Christians, he could have basically had a stress induced psychotic break and hallucinated the vision of Jesus that he had, then converted.
Thing is though, Christians would have to … you know exist and already be a real thing first, for that to make sense.
It does explain why Paul does not mention some very key elements of the narrative of the Gospels: He just had not actually read about or heard of those parts yet.
This creates some theological problems down the line, and some of those problems were ‘remedied’ by what a good deal of scholars and historians believe to be forgeries… chapters of the Bible that modern Christians attribute to Paul, but do not seem to actually have been written by Paul.
It is also possible to some of the empty tomb accounts in some of the Gospels as similar kinds of trauma induced hallucinations.
Mark famously originally just ends with an empty tomb, and nobody said anything about this because they were scared… and then the last bit of verses giving Mark a more satisfying ending have been shown to be added … decades later.
The explanation I heard was that it was likely Mary and Peter hallucinated Jesus only a few days after he died. That’s a very common timeframe for when people hallucinate seeing dead loved ones, and the early descriptions in Bible match the flavor of dead loved-one hallucinations people typically have, with the figure assuring the person everything will be all right and whatnot. Other descriptions (like Jesus appearing to all twelve disciples or crowds of people) seem to have been written later more as persuasive arguments, with doubting Tomas acting as the stand-in for the skeptical listener. This is all from “How Jesus Became God” and I have no idea how mainstream or fringe the author’s views are.
I think it is more likely that they refer to the minimum witnesses argument put firth by a youtuber Paulogia. He has done a lot to popularize it as a response to the criticism that sceptics have no singular explanation for the proposed evidence of Jesus provided by the spread of christianity and the accounts of early cristians.
I thought Paulogia’s minimum witnesses argument is basically that Paul could have hallucinated, and that those who witnessed an empty tomb basically did see an empty tomb, but circumstantial confusion led them to misinterpret what they saw?
Aah okay, that makes sense. Paulogia does however put forward at least one more person having an experience, possibly due to a grief hallucination. If I remember correctly he suggested Peter being the one to have it.
I also don’t remember him ever suggesting that the empty tomb is an actual fact in need of explanation. I think he sees it as likely that Jesus would have been unceremoniously put in a mass- or ditch grave as was common for crucifixion victims. The tomb would then be a detail added on later by other christians, likely through narrative evolution.
I may misremember some of it though, so maybe I should go back and rewatch as well.
I agree with you that Jesus wasn’t God, who doesn’t exist, and that there were no miracles, which are impossible. However, this is not the same thing as saying that there’s no evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Jewish apocalyptic preacher.
The earliest documents about Jesus, such as the Pauline Epistles, were written by people who knew people who knew him. In a mostly illiterate society 2,000 years ago, this is about as good as evidence gets. It’s also the exact same kind of evidence as a journalist or researcher writing an account based on interviews with people. This was how, e.g, Herodotus wrote his histories. When Herodotus says ‘A guy rode a dolphin once’ we dismiss that. But we don’t say ‘The people in the Histories didn’t exist, except those for whom there’s physical evidence, which is about three of them, not including the author’. We do much the same with Jesus and the miracles.
If the Apostles had wanted, for some reason, to make up a guy, that would have been risky. Other people would have just said, ‘That guy didn’t exist’. If they had anyway decided to make up a guy, they’d have invented someone who actually fulfilled the Jewish propehcies of the Messiah, instead of inventing Jesus, who obviously didn’t. This suggests they didn’t invent him, which strengthens the plausibility of the evidence we do have.
A third way of looking at this is to ask if there are any comparable figures, religious founders from the historic era, who we now think were wholly made up in the way you’re suggesting. But there aren’t. The Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster - they all certainly existed. Indeed, I can’t think of any figures form the time period who were actually imaginary.
Personally, I think it’s most likely that he’s composed of many people. It’s a bunch of stories which all got attributed as one person, which isn’t uncommon. Personally, though I’m far from an expert, I think there wasn’t a singular Jesus figure who actually existed, but rather a story of a figure named Jesus that rose from stories about other events.
Like you said, it’s almost certain that something was happening around that time. In fact, there are many more Messiahs who were mostly forgotten. I just think it’s most likely that people told stories and those stories all merged together into another larger story, which then became the story of Jesus.
It’s certainly possible that sayings of other people were later attributed to him, but to really make this case you’d need to have quotations that were attributed to multiple sources, including him, if you see what I mean. Absent that, it could be true, but there’s no particular reason to believe it.
There are enough specific biographical details about Jesus of Nazareth to make it likely that there’s a specific, real central figure. For example, the fact that he was from Nazareth was a problem for his early followers (it didn’t match the Messianic prophecies), which is why they invented the odd story of the census, so that they could claim he’d been born in Bethlehem, the hometown of King David, from whom Jesus was supposedly descended. That seems unlikely to have happened if there hadn’t been a real, central historical figure.
Also, none of the early non-Christian sources claim he wasn’t real or that he was a composite, which they surely would have done if there was any doubt on the matter.