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I'm about as atheist as they come, but it seems pretty settled history that the man existed and was politically impactful
He was most likely a real guy. But a guy Christian’s would absolutely hate: a brown Communist Palestinian who hung out with prostitutes, lepers, pariahs, refuted the legitimacy of the state, and organized massive mutual aid events to feed the poor. Probably a good dude. It’s a shame his followers are dicks though.
I'm starting to think he wasn't all that great. He would have been someone who started a little apocalyptic religious following around himself, and those kind of people don't tend to have the best interests of their followers at heart.
He probably did see himself as starting something that would kick the Romans out of Judea and install himself as king. Judas got cold feet about it and warned the authorities. The Romans crucified him for exactly what the gospel accounts say, except they had a lot more evidence than the writers were letting on.
The Romans crucified him for exactly what the gospel accounts say, except they had a lot more evidence than the writers were letting on.
Very well. How come Pilot didn't take out the rest of the 11 and instead let them operate openly in Jerusalem? If Jesus was real and killed for trying to overthrow the state why wouldn't the state go after the rest of them? Pilot wasn't known for being a merciful guy and the Romans put down anyone who threatened them.
We know they were operating openly because Paul talks about visiting them and sending them money. Plus there are a few accounts of them.
Very strange. Almost as if there was no execution and James just made it up. Romans arent going to be interested in some weird mystery cult with a dead ruler.
The bible Jesus probably never existed, but there were clearly a guy a lot of people followed called Jesus that the romains crucified.
Except his name was probably some version of Joshua. The Jesus spelling comes from the Greek, where a lot of masculine names end in -s.
Yeshua is one I've heard used for his historical name.
Yeshua = god will save us. Interesting how the guy who would be a saviour would be named that. Like the rebellion leader being named Rebel, the evil villain who gets eight limbs named Dr. Octavious, or the evil guy being named Darkside.
Must be a pure coincidence
Wasn't it the icebergs that crucified him?
No you're thinking of the other thing people worship... that passenger ship they made a movie about.
It was definitely the arugala that kaled him.
that passenger ship they made a movie about.
PILATE: "Are you the King of the Jews?"
JESUS: "No." (strikes t-pose) "I'm the King of the World!!!"
Yeah, disbelieving in the existence of Jesus the Jewish carpenter is about as silly as disbelieving in the existence of Pontius Pilate.
I have physical evidence that Pilate existed as well as the testimony of people alive at the time and the claim isn't even that big.
I'm an anti-theist, and I used to be on this page, but a while ago I read about how even this might not be true. We don't have any real proof he existed at all.
Where'd you read that? Here are at least the known sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
There's way less evidence of a ton of historical figures and events that are taken for granted as established history. Just my two cents
Right. It's applying the same standard of evidence that we use for everything else on history. Truth is, we don't have great evidence for pretty much anyone who wasn't a regional ruler. If you rose the standard much higher, you'd end up with history being a big blank, and that's not useful.
In other words, if you reject a historical Jesus outright, you also have to reject Socrates and Spartacus and a whole lot of others.
Spartacus was real. I know because I'm Spartacus.
I'm Spartacus!
Socrates: we have the testimony of his student speaking to other people who also knew him. For Jesus we do not have that. Also the claim is small. A philosopher living in the golden age of philosophy in the center of it. It is like me saying I know a software developer who lived in San Jose in 1999 to a group of people who also knew him in 1999.
Clippy was the greatest software developer that ever lived
I’m surprised that Socrates denialism isn’t a thing tbh. Plato’s Socrates is really a sockpuppet for Plato, read Xenophon and you get someone very different.
I've ran into a few times in these sorts of Jesus Don't Real threads. At least it's applying the standard of evidence consistently.
and events that are taken for granted as established history. Just my two cents
Very well. Please list one that is as big as a claim. Remember extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
The other person who responded before you listed Socrates and Spartacus, who both have fewer sources for their existence. Another is Hannibal Barcus and the Punic Wars, our knowledge of which is almost entirely based on the account of Polybius. There are a ton of others, you're welcome to read history. There is nothing extraordinary about whether or not Jesus Christ existed vs any of these other people, at no point are we discussing anything metaphysical here
None of those three are as big as a claim.
There is nothing extraordinary about whether or not Jesus Christ existed
Bull. Even people decades later who opposed Christianity noticed it. Wondering why anyone would follow a dead leader. A regular guy could not have inspired multiple generations of followers when he hadn't setup any institutions and only preached for about 6 months. If however James made it up and he lived until he was an old man that would explain it.
Ok
We think Mary and one or two others hallucinated and saw Jesus after he died. It's actually not totally unheard of for people to hallucinate recently dead loved ones. Exactly why that kind of thing happens is an open debate, but the hallucination have a few things in common, like being more likely with people you were strongly attached to, and the hallucinated person basically assuring you things will be alright.
Anyway, so a hallucinated dead mini-cult leader could totally inspire a few key people to start a religion. Without those two key things, he probably would have been forgotten to history.
We think Mary
Just weakening the claims to slide it within the possible instead of following the evidence to where it leads. Mary could not have just been someone James hired to ramble. No? Couldn't just go with the simplest possible explanation for the data. Have to invent this whole sequence of events that just so happen to wipe out all supporting evidence along the way.
Anyway, so a hallucinated dead mini-cult leader could totally inspire a few key people to start a religion. Without those two key things, he probably would have been forgotten to history.
Name one. Name a single time in history that a cult leader for six months produced a religion that was remotely successful. Joseph Smith 14 years, Buddha supposedly 50, Mohammed 22, Huysan 29 years.
You can't. Religions survive their founder when they build institutions. Which takes time. The simple explanation is that James made it all up and Paul took it seriously. Those two men spent about 4 decades building up Christianity on two supports. If Jesus had really existed and died after a few months James would have not continued the mission.
It's my understanding most estimates put his preaching days between 1 and 3 years, but for the purposes of both our arguments, it's immaterial.
I'm struggling to understand why Jesus being completely made up is more plausible than even just James seizing the opportunity to deify a dead preacher? Like, why is it that James and Paul being the practical founders of Christianity can't coexist with the existence of Jesus? While I believe James was earnest in his faith, I don't see why that matters?
Regardless of their faith, everyone agrees that Paul and James are the biggest reasons for Christianity's early success. Wouldn't it be easier to use an unknown dead religious figure as your central theme than to make one up? You'd have ready-baked independent witnesses to say "yeah that guy really did exist" and then all you have to add in is the part where he comes back to life for a few days and then conveniently disappears into heaven.
It’s my understanding most estimates put his preaching days between 1 and 3 years, but for the purposes of both our arguments, it’s immaterial.
Yeah because they are copying John who was writing a century later. Mark has it at 6 months and he was "only" writing 40 years later. Given the silence of Paul problem a minimum historical Jesus is going to preach on the lower end. Hence six months. Kinda strange how despite preaching for supposedly 1 to 3 years the only Jewish holiday mentioned is Passover. Almost as if all the Gospel writers didn't know anything.
m struggling to understand why Jesus being completely made up is more plausible than even just James seizing the opportunity to deify a dead preacher? Like, why is it that James and Paul being the practical founders of Christianity can’t coexist with the existence of Jesus? While I believe James was earnest in his faith, I don’t see why that matters?
It isn't that it isn't possible it is that it doesn't arise naturally from the data. I was late to work today. Is it possible it is because that Liam Neason had a tense hostage situation on my block? Sure it is a possible. Is it likely? I would say no.
This is the problem with apologetics, Christian or otherwise, they can't advance evidence for what they believe so they lower the claim to try to sneak it in.
If there were a historical Jesus
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you have to explain why Pilot let James and co open operate right under his nose. So step 1 is to figure out why Pilot acted contrary to his nature.
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You have to explain why the Pharisees didn't do anything either. They operated a secret police for heresy by their own records. Step 2 is to figure out why they acted contrary to their nature
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You have to explain the total lack of relics and known holy sites, in the 1st century. Unlike every other religion.
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You have to explain why no one else in the Jesus family came forward
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You have to explain why Paul can't decide if James is a biological brother or not
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You have to explain how so many movements and context movements popped up in nearly no time.
Sure it is possible this crazy sequence of events, with multiple people acting out of character happened, but the data we have doesnt make it the simplest explaination. The simplest explaination was James was running a mystery cult about his heavenly brother and Paul took it seriously. That's why Paul didn't know anything, there was nothing to know.
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Real talk, he hasn't been proven to exist. Not even a little.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
And as you read through you will notice a heavy bias towards the assumption he did exist...but again, without proof. It's kind of silly the lie he was real is so prevalent.
Each attempt to prove his existence relied on very loose reasoning. The closest they have ever come breaks down to one actual historical figure who wasn't a Christian mentioning some thieves who believed in Jesus numerous decades after Jesus supposedly died - which for a long time was proof enough...somehow.
At this point scholars have admitted they will never have actual proof that he existed - that proof is "ultimately unattainable". And much like you noted with "political impact" they have moved the goal posts to the impact on society the concept of Jesus had as their proof. So... yeah, definitely not proven.
What did you expect? We're talking about one guy who might have lived over 2000 years ago. You're not going to find his birth certificate and social security number.
The best anyone can do is assign a probability to his existence. And reading the article you yourself linked to, that probability seems to be pretty high.
The best anyone can do is assign a probability to his existence
For a person that is considered an actual god, we should expect more than “probable” existence. I think pointing out the lack of evidence for a supposed god is perfectly acceptable.
You're missing the point or you're being deliberately obtuse. Either way, nobody's trying to prove that Jesus Christ existed in this thread (at least, nobody that is arguing in good faith - no pun intended). We're talking about the real guy that MOST LIKELY really existed but, putting aside his supposed divine heritage, would have been basically a regular guy back then.
A regular guy who created three different movements in under 3 years, convinced multiple people to abandon their families and income for life with no power beyond words, who managed to somehow someway have the entire legal system in place not work properly, and was able to convince Pilot to not do the sensible thing which would be wipe out his followers.
Could you pull this off? With no money and influence could you go to say Mississippi, convince 12 men to abandon their wives/children/income, lead them on a suicide run, somehow manipulate the justice system to not give you a regular trial, yet shield all of your followers for decades after your death, and inspire two separate movements after you are dead...in under 3 years.
If a regular guy has this level of charisma I would be pretty impressed.
This happens regularly... They are called cults today... Their members also believe their Messiah is a messenger from (or literally is) god... And they get much more than 12.
In six months?
Jim Jones started his church in 1954 and had enough followers to buy his own church building by 1955.
I don't know the exact timeline on it but his faith healing garbage was a conscious effort to engender faith in his teachings and has been written about as being effective in less than a year.
Sorry. Did he die 6 months after he started his church? I didn't ask if he had enough money to buy a building, tax free at the absurd cost of owning a building in the 50s. Really people making minimum wage could afford a house back then.
Worth mentioning that he ran the church for another 24 years and now it is gone. The historical Jesus claim is that he started the church, got people to join, six months later they were willing to do a suicide attack, and 20 centuries later they are still around.
You are welcome to back off on this. You are not going to find a single time in history, of the thousands of documented religions, where this happened.
Founder, suicidal cult, dead, and still around all in the span of half a year.
Occum's razor. Every other religion that had any success had a founder who spent multiple decades keep it going building up the institutions needed. So what is more likely that Christianity is the one odd one out of thousands or it is the same? James was running a mystery cult centered around a fictional heavenly figure.
I expect Paul to be able to say literally anything about the guy. Which he can't seem to do. It is called the Silence of Paul problem.
We have two sources for Spartacus: Plutarch of Chaeronea and Appian of Alexandria. Both were written a century after he died. The two accounts mostly agree, but in the middle of the story they go completely different directions and then meet up again for the ending.
Spartacus is generally regarded as existing. We don't know which account had it right, and it's possible neither of them are. We will probably never know.
Point is, if you're not a ruler, then historical evidence of your existence tends to be thin. Jesus likely existed, and we have better evidence for him than Spartacus.
Very well. Show me the contemporary evidence of Jesus existing
Note how the article uses the word "scholars" as opposed to scientists. Scientists would simply state that there is no actual evidence about the existence of this guy so this is all speculation.
Then you have to do the same for a huge number of other historical figures. You end up with history being a huge blank beyond people who were rulers. That's not useful, and not necessary.
What historical figures do you have in mind? The difference between a historical and a mythical person is the evidence available for their existence. History (the scientific kind) has a pretty clear idea which is which.
I'll copy my writeup from elsewhere in the thread.
We have two sources for Spartacus: Plutarch of Chaeronea and Appian of Alexandria. Both were written a century after he died. The two accounts mostly agree, but in the middle of the story they go completely different directions and then meet up again for the ending.
Spartacus is generally regarded as existing. We don’t know which account had it right, and it’s possible neither of them are. We will probably never know.
Point is, if you’re not a ruler, then historical evidence of your existence tends to be thin. Jesus likely existed, and we have better evidence for him than Spartacus.
Spartacus is generally regarded as existing
That's the whole point. We assume the guy existed but there's no proof.
So you're going to deny the existence of Spartacus? Really?
When did I say that? I said there's no definitive proof. That's not denying the possibility that the guy actually existed. But as you said, the evidence is rather thin.
We can say he was from Thrace, that he was captured as a slave and fought as a gladiator in Capua, he led a slave revolt, and ran the Roman Army ragged all over the Italian peninsula. Including armies led by Marcus Crassus and Julius Caesar.
We can say that Jesus was from Nazareth, he started a weird little apocalyptic group within Judaism when he was around 30 years old, was baptized by a guy who started a parallel apocalyptic group (there were a lot of these guys running around Israel at the time), and he was crucified by the Romans. He almost certainly wasn't trying to start a whole new religion separate from Judaism; that came later, likely with Paul.
And that's it, that's the claim. Nobody is asking you to believe in the superstitious aspects, just the completely mundane claim that Christianity likely has a singular individual that inspired the movement.
We can say that Jesus was from Nazareth,
Prove it.
was baptized by a guy
Which Paul doesnt mention for no reason whatsoever despite it being really good for his case.
and he was crucified by the Romans.
Hung or nailed? Which.
just the completely mundane claim that Christianity likely has a singular individual that inspired the movement.
Sure, there's a real possibility that this was the case. I'm not in any way denying that, just pointing out that there's no way to be sure.
James Cameron did a national geographic documentary proving the guy existed. They found his ostuary. Which fits the time period. It was some astronomically absurd chance that it wasn't him. Since everyone in the tomb had the family names of all of his relatives. Something like it was a 1 in 10 million chance that it wasn't the nuclear family's buried remains.
That is hilariously untrue, have you any idea how big that news would be? They don't even know if Arimathea was a real place, we certainly don't know about Jesus family - none of them are mentioned outside the limited references in the Bible
The Lost Tomb of Jesus https://g.co/kgs/A1gqTdn
The very first sentence in Wikipedia describes it as pseudoarchaeological docudrama. Got to love it.
Why does your sky zombie hate you so much he gives you such bad evidence?
I don't believe in the Bible lol
But the historical figure existed. It's not an amalgamation of fantasy. He was likely nothing like his imagery in pop culture.
Ok so if you don't believe in the Bible what is your source of information that he existed?
Do you believe Alexander the Great existed? Or Cleopatra? Or Socrates?
Ok so if you don’t believe in the Bible what is your source of information that he existed?
You are making the claim it is on you to defend it. If I say unicorns exist I have to provide evidence for it not demand that other people defend every single aspect of their life.
So what is the source for your claim for Jesus given that you have thrown out already pretty much all the evidence we have?
Settled by whom? The world dominated by Christian nations to boost their own influence? This is like Indian scholars saying all their gods are real and definitely existed and selectively citing texts written to confirm that bias. History isn't as clear cut as you think it is.
Believe it or not people lied since the they began to talk. Just because there's some text doesn't make it entirely accurate.
This is like Indian scholars saying all their gods are real and definitely existed and selectively citing texts written to confirm that bias
It's actually not even remotely like that in any way
All you've proven is that you haven't engaged with the scholarly arguments for historical Jesus at all. A bunch of them are not kind to a fundamentalist position. For example, there's an argument that the census story around Jesus' birth is a fabrication--there's no evidence for a Roman census around that time, and why would everyone need to travel to their birth town for this?--but the fact that they're sticking it there is because they had to deal with Jesus being an actual guy from Nazareth. They really, really want to attach him to King David by having him be born in Bethlehem, and him coming from Nazareth gets in the way of that. So they create this whole weird census story to make up for it.
No matter if you agree with this take or not, it's clear no fundie would come up with that or accept it.
No one besides fundies believes in the census nonsense.
the fact that they’re sticking it there is because they had to deal with Jesus being an actual guy from Nazareth
So it doesn't show up until Mark. No other documents mention it, includinf ones that talk about James who presumably would have been from there as well. We also know that no documents within a century of Jesus even mention that village existing. Josphius mentions ten villages around it without mentioning it. Archeological evidence isnt great there could have been a single barn there in 0 AD or not. Now we know that Mark made mistakes about the geography of the area. We also know that his grasp of Aramaic was pretty poor. It is very possible that he might have just misunderstood. He could have heard Nazar (sorta wandering Jewish monks) and with an old map screwed up.
In any case even if the oral tradition really did hold that this village (again it might not have existed) somehow was the place Jesus was from that doesn't prove the oral tradition was correct.
As for the other gospels mentioning it well they all copied off Mark so that is to be expected. Pseudohistory has no correction method. Once a mistake is made it just replicates.
They really, really want to attach him to King David by having him be born in Bethlehem, and him coming from Nazareth gets in the way of that.
Yeah but noticed Paul didn't do that since he was Jewish. The King David line was scattered to the wind, his descendents could be born anywhere. It took people who only spoke Greek and didn't understand the history of the region to work hard to make Jesus from Bethlehem.
So this is my point. We know the Gospels are full of lies. Why are you convinced that there is a kernel of truth behind them?
The fact remains that there is no actual evidence for the existence of the guy so ultimately it's all speculative.
There's not much actual evidence for a lot of people of the period (e.g., Pontius Pilate) outside of historical writings. That's pretty ludicrous way to rationalize a petty belief.
The standard for judging a person as historical as opposed to mythical is that there multiple independent contemporary sources. Neither of which exist for Jesus so saying he definitely existed is rationalizing a petty belief.
We have physical evidence for him and the claim is small.