Do you believe Jesus existed?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Diane Sutton on October 6, 2009 at 7:55pm

A. Believed he existed, claims are false

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Permalink Reply by Denise Royer on October 7, 2009 at 12:48am

E. I don't know.

Joseph Smith showed us that key religious characters can be entirely made up. Fortunately, we know that Smith pulled the Book of Mormon out of his hat. Did Paul follow a made up character? I'm fairly certain that the parables and stories were added long after a charismatic character would have lived. Jesus is much like Moses, a partial name with a very big question mark.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Batton on October 7, 2009 at 1:26pm

Your question about Paul interests me. Paul (Saul) was basically an apocalyptic preacher who believed in an imminent end of days and taught that nothing in ordinary human endeavor mattered any longer in the face of it. In this respect he is very much like the Jesus of the gospels. Scholars agree that the New Testament letters traditionally ascribed to Paul could not all have been written by him. Ephesians and the Pastoral epistles (Titus, Timothy), for instance, reveal historical contexts dating well after the end of Paul's life. Ephesians reveals a more elaborate, developed christology (theology of Christ) than does any of the rest of the Pauline corpus. Ephesians was probably written by someone living around the end of the 1st century. As to those epistles that are generally accepted as authentic Paul, we can say at most that they are 'signed' by Paul and that they are reasonably congruent in content, language, style, and historical context (ca. 40-67 CE). That is pretty good evidence that at least they were all written by the same author.
The 'historical' Paul is also a bit of a mystery. All we know about him is what he says of himself (very little) in the letters, together with the much later stories about him told in the Acts of the Apostles. This latter work is thought to have been composed by someone who lived decades after Paul's death. Here we are told that Paul knew Peter and James, apostles of Jesus, that he persecuted early Christians, that about three years after his 'conversion' he began preaching about Jesus among the gentiles, and that he acquired several disciples of his own among the churches that he founded in Asia Minor. Most of the Acts of the Apostles is about Paul's heroic exploits. However, the Acts is not regarded by very many scholars as an historically reliable document. But that's another story. The account of Paul's conversion is suspect. For one thing, how did he obtain authority to persecute Christians? This is not explained, and it surely does need explanation. Indeed, this and other details of Paul's narration suggest that he knew very little about 1st century Palestinian Judaism, which was very complex, as Flavius Josephus attests in The Jewish Wars.
Could it be that this person named Paul (Saul) invented the Christian religion out of whole cloth? Some scholars have suggested so. Nowhere in his letters does Paul claim to have known the 'historical' Jesus in life, nor does he relate any second-hand stories about Jesus that he might have heard from others. He does not teach any connected account of Jesus' trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. Always he refers to direct revelations given through the risen Christ as the sole source of his decidedly well-developed theological teachings. Nowhere does Paul refer to any miraculous deeds or any of the teachings of Jesus, except for his reference to Jesus' 'words of institution' at the Last Supper (I Corinthians). Is it possible that the gospel authors invented their contradictory stories of the Last Supper, suggested by Paul's brief and pointed reference, as context for a creedal statement that Paul or someone else actually invented? Some scholars think so. Sorry I didn't document this better, but I don't want to go on and on. I'll leave my contribution for someone else to pick up.

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Permalink Reply by Denise Royer on October 10, 2009 at 1:44am

Thank you for your detailed reply. I agree that Paul never knew the Jesus he wrote about. The "authentic" Pauline letters indicate that a tradition existed before Paul fell off his horse. The later letters and gospels are far too removed from the origin to be useful in discovering an authentic Jesus. It is unclear if Paul revered a completely mythological character or a person that was given mythological status. I think it is safe to say, that even if a Jesus existed and got the ball rolling, the current idea of him is so far removed that it is just as correct to say he never existed.

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Permalink Reply by Trevor Nelson on October 7, 2009 at 1:38am

I've never seen any evidence of the existence of a Jesus the Christ. There is not a single bit of historical evidence that is not hearsay and would not stand up remotely in a court of law. None of the writings talking about a Jesus in this context were written by people that even lived in the same generation.

So I'm a strong C.

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Permalink Reply by Fabio on October 7, 2009 at 4:51am

C, in the sense that the Biblical Jesus did not exist. The fictional character is a collection of different archetypes stitched together to make the Jesus of the Bible and the name itself was as common as James is today. Self-proclaimed messiahs were also a dime a dozen back in those days. And yes, there is no contemporary historical or archaeological evidence that said person ever existed.

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Permalink Reply by Bob Batton on October 7, 2009 at 8:25am

I'm in substantial agreement with Fabio. I will of course concede that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, the Jesus of the four canonical gospels strikes me as a complete fabrication, as is the 'divine' Christ of Christian doctrine. As for the various extra-canonical gospel accounts, all are as discrepant, contradictory and improbable as the canonical ones. Indeed, most, if not all of these latter are of late authorship and highly fanciful. None of the gospel accounts makes consistent sense in the early 1st century historical context. The Jesus depicted in the gospels is probably an ahistorical conflation of any number of distinct apocalyptic (end times) prophets, preachers, or messianic figures who lived between 150 BCE and 100 CE. Fabulous elements common to many legendary and mythical heroes of antiquity are also woven into the character. The only particularly 'religious' message of Jesus is best understood as that of an ordinary man who, like many before and after him, believed and preached that the end of the world was imminent, wherefore nothing else in human life mattered anymore. I recommend Robert M. Price's book, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man as a primer on all facets of so-called 'historical Jesus' scholarship.
If you're wondering why anyone would want to invent such a character and story, and why so many otherwise intelligent people would believe it, just ask yourself why Joseph Smith would want to invent so fabulous a construction as Mormonism, and why anyone rational would believe that nonsense.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Miller on October 7, 2009 at 3:05pm

Can I add an E option: Agnostic about his existence, as insufficient historical evidence exists to establish it either way. However, miraculous claims are false

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Permalink Reply by Humanist Mark on October 7, 2009 at 3:39pm

I believe a man named Jesus may have existed, but there were probably a dozen other men with the same name. I don't believe he performed any miracles at all. It's possible that he may have been a healer and perhaps used herbs and potions to heal common ailments like rickets, arthritis, etc., but these minor cures have been orally translated over thousands of years to make him the son of God and then the way to God. The rest of the story is a big, urban legend that just got out of hand!

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Permalink Reply by Stewart Thurston on October 8, 2009 at 7:56pm

I heard an atheist friend once tell a xtian friend that wether jesus existed or not was irrelevant to him. The xtian really got pissed after several rounds of irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant, and the complete refusal to argue with the guy. I thought it was brilliant; the xtian just couldn't cope with the idea of his god(s) being irrelevant.

I'm personally in the C camp.

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Permalink Reply by Ogden Lafaye on November 21, 2009 at 10:57pm

I can believe a slice of pie...everything else is irrelevant when you have a slice of pie for breakfast.

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Permalink Reply by Stephen Turrisi on October 9, 2009 at 5:33am

"A" - I believe a dude called Jesus. He was just a dude. No powers. Nothing truly noteworthy. Maybe he was a nice guy. Maybe even did some nice things. But no...not the son of a mythical man in the sky.

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