Do you believe Jesus existed?

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Permalink Reply by Alan on January 9, 2010 at 9:06pm

Who were the historians? I have never read a single document of history from the time period that even mentions him. Not even as a foot note. I have to say that I do not at all believe the "The" Jesus in question existed. As many have said, there were many Jesus at that time. But nothing leads me to believe that this guy was real.

Like all of my opinions regarding theism etc, just show me SOME evidence. And I do not mean biblical texts or biblical historians. That's a silly frame of reference in my opinion, they already have a foot in the neighbor's door.

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Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on January 10, 2010 at 4:44pm

I too would look for follow up on these "Two Roman Historian" references. Many have been submitted only to be proved as forgeries. The only one close to credible, and it's only one, is Josephus. Even then, while he was an acknowledged historian of the time his reference to Jesus comes after Jesus' supposed death and after Saul of Tarsus (Paul) started circulating his writings. Scholars have also questioned the entry as a possible forgery as many say it doesn't fit textually with the rest of the surrounding bits.

That said, like Rosemary said, Jesus (Yeshu/Yeshua/Yeshuara) was a common name. Heresy was a common crime. Street preaching that "Any second now, God will save us from Roman oppression" was a common practice.

Hence, my belief that there likely was a Jesus, or more likely several, which resulted in that name being attached to the Osirus/Horus/Attitus/Mithra story. The popular god-man myths of that time had several common themes: Prophesied birth. Virgin mother divine father. Persecuted as an infant/child. Born on or around Winter Solstice (sun god). Roam the countryside with disciples (12 being a popular number, matching signs of the zodiac, 12 months, usually 12 full moons in a year, popular number in sacred geometry). Preaching salvation of the oppressed from their oppressors. Betrayal leading to execution. Resurrection from the dead to complete the salvation promise.

The trend was to take those very popular themes, erase the other guy's name (Osirius, Horus, Mithra, whomever), attach your own guy's name and spin the details to sound like he's talking about you and yours.

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Permalink Reply by Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM on January 8, 2010 at 7:54pm

@Chris.

There were thousands of people named Jesus at that time. It was a very common name. Many of them were probably killed.

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Permalink Reply by Kristian Mattila on January 9, 2010 at 1:36pm

While I don't think the issue carries a significant difference, I see no reason to believe he didn't exist.

All kinds of more or less crazy people have managed to attract following exponentially higher what Jesus allegedly got during his lifetime.

I believe most events of what NT outlines for Jesus' life have their foundation related to truth. For example, he probably went fishing with his buddies, there might have been a big ass storm, and like all fishing stories, the "one that got away", events that took place while no one else was watching, were fabrication to make things sound cool.

Like I said, it makes very little difference in the greater scheme of things, but is an interesting question nonetheless.

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Permalink Reply by Chuck on January 9, 2010 at 1:55pm

If you look at the figure of James in the new testament, you find a leader of the Church of Jerusalem and "brother of Jesus." His dealings with Paul show James to be a devout Jew strictly following Judaic law, who pushed to stop Paul's laxity on the law. Christianity obviously took the Paul direction, as the Nazarene Church was all about Judaism and keeping the law, same as the zealots who rose against the Romans. So, whether or not Jesus existed, her certainly did not exist as presented by present day Christianity.

One other note, the Catholic church, in the late 19th century, created a group of scholars to study the history of Christianity to counter the German scholars who had found no historic evidence of Jesus. Unfortunately for the church, the group (called the Modernists) basically came up with the wrong answers and found that a lot of the bible was myth. The Inquisition kicked in on their heads.

The reference to two Roman historians from that era writing about Jesus is historically dubious. One has been shown to be a forgery (context and literary style different, and a copy of a copy of a...), and the other shows no real information. A real non-biased study of history shows no evidence other than third or fourth hand mentions. Even Paul's letters never mention Jesus or any historic information about him. Christ for him is a gnostic figure on another plane of existence.

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Permalink Reply by Radu on January 9, 2010 at 4:57pm

And the answer is ... C. "Jesus" from the bible did not exist in my opinion. Just a "character" in the hands of the authors of Christianity.

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Permalink Reply by Alan on January 9, 2010 at 9:07pm

Agreed, everything "he" did is borrowed from fictional religious characters from before his supposed time. That's not evidence, just heresay.

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Permalink Reply by The Secular One on January 9, 2010 at 6:14pm

C.

There is no evidence outside of the New Testament that was written after the fact by anonymous people who probably never even met him...heck they probably weren't even born during his lifetime. The stories we are presented don't agree on any significant details and thus we have no reason to believe those stories are even about the same person.

I, however, don't claim he didn't exist.

As for the name...there were supposedly plenty of people who's name we'd read as 'Jesus.' One of them may have died at the hands of the Romans as a Messiah. That, however, doesn't seem to have any ties to the stories in the New Testament.

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Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on January 12, 2010 at 2:27pm

As for the name...there were supposedly plenty of people who's name we'd read as 'Jesus.' One of them may have died at the hands of the Romans as a Messiah. That, however, doesn't seem to have any ties to the stories in the New Testament.

Precisely. Consider the Wizard of Oz. The main character is "Dorothy, who has a dog and lives on a farm in Kansas." I'm sure there were lots of people named Dorothy who had dogs and lived on farms in Kansas. Does that make the story true?

Likewise, street-preaching was a common activity in 0 CE for which lots of people got in trouble with the law and were even executed. Yeshu/Yeshua/Yeshuara was a common name. So there probably was a - more likely several - Jesus'. Just enough to have the name attached to the otherwise popular god-man fairy tale.

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Permalink Reply by Marvin Jackson on January 9, 2010 at 10:18pm

There probably was a man name Jesus, but his certainly no God, son of god, and no super powers. I fall between A or B.

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Permalink Reply by DeafAtheist on January 10, 2010 at 5:10pm

I'm under category C. I don't believe Jesus existed at all.

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Permalink Reply by Mykeru on January 11, 2010 at 10:25am

I don't believe Jesus existed.

First, I don't believe that the Jesus of the Gospels existed. The Gospels were written at least a generation after the events they supposedly describe, none of the authors of the Gospels were apostles and were not contemporary with the person they describe. They aren't reliable narratives, contradicting both historical fact and each other. Certainly the miraculous events can be dismissed.

Secondly, while it is possible that there was a person called Jesus who lived, had a following and was nailed to a post, there just isn't any evidence for the existence of this Jesus. None of the 60 or so contemporary historians operating in that area mention him, his following, or the supposed multitude who witnessed his miracles or resurrection. What's more, there are only a couple of extra-Biblical mentions of someone who might be Jesus. One mention by Josephus is almost certainly a later interpolation into an existing text (an early example of the phenomena "Lying for Jesus"). Another, mentioning a "Christus" who lead a rebellion in Rome, isn't even close to being the supposed historical Jesus.

Just by way of comparison, I've been to the Kong Family mansion in Qifu, China. There are accounts that that mention Kong-Fu-Tsu (Confucius) and he predates the historical Jesus by 500 years.

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