It seems like the consensus is that the stories probably stem from a real guy because that’s deemed more likely than no person existing as a basis for the story, but no, there is not material evidence for jesus christ’s existence
Girl gets married
Girl gets shitfaced and sleeps with someone other than her husband
Girl is pregnant!
Girl makes up some dumb shit to avoid jealous rage
Shit gets waaaaay out of hand.
There are many Jesus’s in the world.
There is no proof outside of the Bible and some other writings. Even those mentions seem to have occurred well after Jesus supposedly lived.
In terms of non-literary proof, there isn’t anything credible.
There’s more evidence that King David existed.
You realize that a significant portion of the bible is the collected letters and works that were at the time (that it was assembled) considered credible, right?
There’s a period of around 80 years that’s pretty hard to account for, but unlike the four gospels where there’s little corroborating evidence that tracks back into that 80 year period, the epistolary works are pretty likely to be authentic. They also reference a bunch of other letters that didn’t survive, something that tends to make them more likely authentic than not. And they involve people who were eyewitnesses of a man named Jesus (or Joshua or Yeshua if you prefer) and his younger (step) brothers.
The rest of the statements about him were solidified by 80 years or so after his death, but all the accounts don’t quite line up — which is actually a good argument for them being based on actual events.
So while there may be plenty of room for debate as to how much of the biblical teachings actually originated with a man named Jesus, his actual existence seems more evident than, say, Shakespeare.
The mental gymnastics is palpable. That things don’t line up is evidence they’re true? And because people believed it at the time it must be credible? Did a guy really live in the belly of a whale for three days simply because some simpletons believed it?
Of course not because it’s a load of hogwash. Go play telephone with a class of 6th graders for 5 minutes and then tell me these stories are accurate. Also the events in most of them are clearly impossible situations.
That’s how epistemological analysis works… if the general structure is the same but everyone pulls different meaning out of an event, something probably happened. If everything lines up exactly, someone probably faked the letters. If there’s totally conflicting stories, the record has been tampered with too much to say anything. If there’s no record, there’s nothing to say one way or another.
I suppose the burden of proof would have to be that low to believe something so ridiculous
How is this post downvoted so much? You said how actial historical analysis work!
Assembled a thousand years after the fact by a group with a vested interest in solidifying the narrative to fit their own.
Hell, the Tanakh didn’t really get put together until well after Christianity appeared and it was a reaction to Christians appropriating Jewish literary culture to establish their own.
It’d be similar to people a thousand years from believing that Christian Gray is literally descended from Edward and Bella.
Chances are he was more like a cult leader it wasn’t until a decade or two after his death that things really got into full swing, so chances are the actual Jesus would be quite surprised by everything “he” did.
But there were a lot of Jewish mystics cropping up at the time so it’s not impossible or even implausible for some one vaguely matching the description to have existed.
Good thing back in the day there were probably very few cult leaders…
Does anyone wonder about how the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the Egyptian myth of Horus affects the narrative about the Jesus that supposedly lived and died a century earlier? You know the one that happened to have incredibly important political value for the established leaders of the time?
No? Me either. Praise Horus!
Exactly. An example from outside the Bible might be Achilles. There was probably a great warrior with that name in the Mycenaean Greek world. Later storytellers probably just added more to make it sound better or the material was from other warriors who were like Achilles.
Some of Jesus’ teachings definitely come from the milieu of the Roman era in Judea and Palestina.
Personally my favorite head canon is that Jesus was, or his parents were, Egyptian born Jews or Coptic converts to Judaism. It’s a reverse Obamas birth certificate. There is so much time spent establishing the lineage and explaining the flight to Egypt.
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.
There are zero contemporary primary sources for his existence.
I don’t think anyone is talking about the miracles when they refer to the historical Jesus.
Every Christian takes an historical proof of Jesus as affirmation of the stories within the New Testament.
Let’s not do the ‘every Christian’ thing. It’s worth remembering the US has a very ‘unique’ type of Christian.
I remember that one miracle closely resembles CPR. He put his hands on a body and brought it back to life.
Nope
There most likely were a bunch of people called Yeshua back then.
Some people say yes, some say no. Christians, agnostics, and atheists on all sides. I hope that answers your question.
To be fair, if someone said Jesus never existed, they clearly wouldn’t be Christian 🤣
It really isn’t so clearcut. You don’t need an actual Jesus for the words attributed to him to be true. “Jesus” works perfectly fine as a container for an idea.
Thing is, it goes against man’s desires. The other religions that took off generally allow men to take more than one wife, fight wars, etc. Christianity basically asks of one to be poor and selfless and pure
The context within which you are raised matters so much more than what’s written in your chosen scripture. That and self interest. Between those two, pretty much anyone can wrangle themselves into believing anything they want. The history of how we got here from there is similarly irrelevant.
There’s quite a bit of contrast between Christianity and Islam in terms of how scripture is presented, as Islam teaches that the Qur’an is literally the words of God. As for Judaism, it’s unfulfilled, and if the New Testament about Jesus is actually true to what happened, then the Jewish prophecies clearly point to Him. Other than that it’s a very elaborate scam made by well educated people which doesn’t really give them any benefit.
Comfort and well-being, or so they believe… for some reason. Personally I like knowing I only get one shot
They were all executed horribly
That doesn’t work. Either there is physical proof or there is none. Afaik the latter is correct.
Ehhhhhh, you probably aren’t trying to be technical, but it’s worth noting that circumstancial evidence is definitely a thing; is evidence that suggests but doesn’t definitively state. As mentioned in this tread, Nero calls out pilate for executing Jesus. There’s also the often overlooked circumstancial evidence that there’s a whole ass religion to the guy, which sure there are other religions etc etc, but most of them don’t have a semi Devine being that you can point to specific dates and times…
I will continue on, I’m an atheist, so I’m not arguing for Christianity, so here’s obligatory circumstancial evidence against historical J.
Wasn’t a census when he was supposed to be born. No written accounts of Herod executing every baby boy in Judea. Etc etc lmgtfy if you need it
The Nero reference you are mentioning was written by Tacitus over a century after he was supposed to have lived. The fact of the matter js that there is no contemporary primary rvidence of hus exisrence.
Frankly, I have no primary evidence of your existence. I could be arguing with a bot right now and it wouldn’t be unbelievable. Primary evidence is a motherfucker, the guy we are talking about was probably illiterate, talking to more people who were illiterate, what kind of primary evidence could there be? Even if we had a body, could we really point to it and say with any real confidence that it was Jesus or just some other person that was crucified?
Honestly ask yourself, what would you accept as primary evidence?
He wants a time machine with Mel Gibsons camera crew to accompany him
Jesus never led an army or ruled a country, so we cannot have coins bearing His face or remnants of an army, etc. However, there is plenty of physical proof of the early Church. There is evidence of pilgrimages to Bethlehem early on and Jerusalem as well, such as the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is a plausible candidate for Jesus’ actual tomb.
Yes there is, here is his mugshot shortly after he was booked. Looks like he spent the evening turning water into wine.
Christianity exists. Religions don’t tend to spring up from nowhere. Every myth has its nugget of truth. Was there a preacher back then whose followers later spread around the world? Almost certainly. Where else could Christianity have come from?
Was he the son of god though? Was he capable of all the miracles the bible claims? Is the god he preached even real? There is no evidence that the answer to these three questions is anything but no I’m afraid.
It is said that the foreskin of Jesus still exists…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce
For all I know it could be just an ancient dried up piece of bacon 🤷♂️
Now ask yourself if there’s any real, physical proof that Zeus, Thor or Anakin Skywalker ever existed.
if you found a corpse it would cause a lot of problems for the religion.
Do you mean to say that there are actual remains of Jesus right now somewhere on Earth?
Ofc there are. Unless they got destroyed someway or another. There was a guy named Jesus that was crucified by the romans and all that. There is proof of that. It’s all the biblical stuff that there’s no proof of.
There was a guy named Jesus that was crucified by the romans and all that. There is proof of that
There isn’t actually. The proof is basically: it’s embarassing that their cult leader got painfully crucified, so the writers of the new testament wouldn’t have made that shit up.
Personally I find it rather unconvincing.
Don’t believe in god either way, but if it’s good enough for the majority of historians , then it’s good enough for me. Not sure why you’d need more, but you do you.
if it’s good enough for the majority of historians
It isn’t. Historians would love to have independent evidence of the existence and crucifixion of Jesus, but there isn’t… so most historians refrain from taking a position one way or the other. The ones that do have to make do with what little objective information they have, and the best they can come up with is: well because of this embarassing thing, it’s more likely that he did exist and was crucified than that he didn’t, because why would they make that up?
That’s rather weak evidence, and far from “proof”.
Not sure why you’d need more
Well for one because the more prominent people who have studied this have a vested interest in wanting it to be true. For example, John P. Meier, who posited this criterion of embarassment that I outlined in my previous comment, isn’t really a historian but a catholic priest, professor of theology (not history) and a writer of books on the subject.
So instead of taking the glory for themselves like pretty much all other humans they decide to preach about an imaginary friend? Meh… Between “guy who got lost in history” and “bunch of guys that raved about that one gf that went to a different school”, I’ll go with the former as the more plausible one.
I’ll concede the fact that it’s not the same level of proof as other figures, but all these people writing about him is more than we have about others.
There are basically four positions you can take about this:
- Jesus existed and was crucified
- We can’t know, because there is no conclusive evidence, but I think (1) is more likely
- We can’t know, because there is no conclusive evidence, but I think (2) is more likely
- Jesus is a myth
I am on (2), as are most historians, and you put yourself on (1).
if there are then there are some issues with the new testament
Don’t they have his foreskin saved as a religious artefact? Like in some church somewhere because it performs miracles?
Relics are almost always fake, and there are usually multiples of them at any given time. A lot of people have had Jesus’ foreskin throughout the years, and I think there are 5 or 6 heads of John the Baptist floating around right now.
LOL, basically, yeah.
and I think there are 5 or 6 heads of John the Baptist floating around right now
This man is hallucinating, so take whatever else he’s saying with a grain of salt.
No.
There’s lots of ambiguous information. There is no firsthand, historically agreed upon data that supports his existence in the form we know him today. In other words, there was no magical guy doing magical things.
There is no Roman record of “nailed 3 prisoners to the posts today; Bill, Roger, and Jesus the magic guy who was a pain in the ass.”
However, like Arthurian Legend, it doesn’t mean some guy like Jesus didn’t exist, or an aggregate of characters weren’t assembled to be him on story. Arthur was possibly just a chieftain of a group who fought a couple of hefty battles and made a name for himself, but he ended up being an almost magical figure with wizards and witches in the story and - guess what, he will “rise again” from the dead when needed. And no, rising from the dead isn’t owned by Christian religious figures, Osiris of Egypt did it, Dionysius of the Greek Pantheon among many others. So maybe some dude, who probably wasn’t named Jesus, caused a stir and got a few people to take note. That grew over hundreds and even thousands of years to what we have now.
Want to know why King Arthur isn’t a competitor to Jesus? He a) doesn’t offer the opportunity to control people in this life for the hope of an afterlife, b) he isn’t profitable.
An interesting thing about what we have now in Christianity though is that it basically spawned as-is in the first century, with the Gospels and Paul’s letters being written decades apart, as well as Church Father’s writings being very consistent. Main differences has been the Roman Catholic Church developing their own doctrine such as Purgatory over time, while the Orthodox and the Protestants tend to reject such developments.
So if it is just a legend, something must have happened to cause a consistent story to develop fairly quickly in comparison to the likes of other legends.
What exactly changed, then?
You mean besides a couple dudes running around telling us to be cool to each other?
You didn’t even read the wiki entry, did you.
I did, and it’s already knowledge we know about the early church
You said:
An interesting thing about what we have now in Christianity though is that it basically spawned as-is in the first century
The article says:
Little is fully known of Christianity in its first 150 years; sources are few.
So you’re making a huge, sweeping statement that Christianity as we know it today is based on something…we don’t know much about? There are 6 major Christian denominations, not to mention hundreds of smaller ones. Which one is the “as-is” one? The one that is exactly “as-is” from CE 100?
You’re forgetting that denominations aren’t actually that different. They all ascribe to the fundamental beliefs in the death and resurrection of Jesus. We do have the Acts of The Apostles as well which documents the early church. The New Testament was written within 100 years of Jesus and all Christians still follow it
