Do you believe Jesus existed?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 7, 2010 at 6:39am

Yes, Jo, I was speaking of contemporaneous evidence/records.

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Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on October 6, 2010 at 2:00pm

--- Fred Werther --- Does anybody really know [Jesus]? :)

No, not really. But lots of people desperately want us to believe that they do.

--- Christ as a spiritually present savior already groups believers spread around same area. So no Jesus was not needed to be a physical person to believe in.

I think you nailed it Fred. The ultimate Theist fallback position is "I know in my heart that Jesus was..." At which point they're talking about spiritual Jesus. Not whomever might have been the physical, flesh-and-blood template to call the god-man myth "Jesus" rather than "Bob" or "Ralph."

And exactly why historical Jesus, as someone else here so wonderfully put it, is a sideshow.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa on October 5, 2010 at 11:26pm

I don't believe he existed at all, actually. My main reasons are because there are no records of him and no one wrote about him until many many years later. I think he was kind of a robin hood type legendary character. I mean if there was a Jesus that caused as much of a ruckus a he supposedly did, why is there not a record? And without any record, how much truth can there be in something written decades later?

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on October 6, 2010 at 1:01am

Hi Lisa,

"My main reasons are because there are no records of him and no one wrote about him until many many years later."

That goes for pretty much every ancient figure that ever existed. So do we conclude that this simply the nature of our source material or that the Ancient world was largely uninhabited? The former of course.

"I mean if there was a Jesus that caused as much of a ruckus a he supposedly did, why is there not a record?"

That's an excellent argument to argue that the ruckus he supposedly caused is greatly exagerrated by his followers and he gets propped up a lot, but it's not a good argument to go from there to saying that he did not exist at all.
Where would you expect to find such a record, by the way? We don't have any such records from the ancient world. Why expect it in this particular case?

"And without any record, how much truth can there be in something written decades later?"

That's actually pretty obvious. I have no idea how old you are, but I'm assuming you know plenty of people who have served in the Vietnam war or who were around in the 1970's. If you were to interview them about these events, could you reconstruct an image of the past (maybe ask them about their squad)? Of course you could: the story might be embellished and clouded a bit, but they'll at least be able to say with some accuracy who existed.
That's about the situation we have with Jesus (and again, for just about every figure of the time).

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Permalink Reply by Rorschach on October 6, 2010 at 6:51am

Some guy (whose name I can't remember) who came on The Daily Show not too long ago was promoting his latest book, "The Ghosts of Cannae". While talking with Jon Stewart he said that the earliest source for Hannibal/The Punic Wars was a historian who lived hundreds of years after the aforementioned conflict.

To my knowledge, this was often the case during antiquity, but yet, we secular people often accuse Christianity of having no historical basis, when it may be that Christianity has a better chance of being true than any other religion in world history.

Josephus mentioned Jesus, and he lived during the first century. Of course though, the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavium is suspect. Besides that though, it seems to me that the multiplicity of extant copies of the new testament during the latter half of the first century (at the very most) is perhaps the justification for my comments in the previous paragraph above.

Although Islam may have a comparable track record, (in terms of how quickly the qur'an was compiled) Muhammed's successor probably burned most (if not all) of the earliest extant copies of the qur'an, making it possibly less historically reliable than the gospels. Then of course there's the finding in Sanaa that may be the currently oldest known qur'an in existence, that's written in shorthand, which may compromise the qur'an's textual integrity.

Anyways, the question of the historicity of Jesus leads to the question of the historicity of the gospels. Other than the gospels, Josephus, maybe some other Jewish historians and the Talmud, there's no evidence that Jesus even existed. Since the gospels are the most detailed accounts of Jesus, that's why so much attention is focused on them, because what one can hope for by reading them is to be able to glean some historical truth from them.

And since it seems that they date back to the first century, and that even during that time there was a large multiplicity of copies of them, perhaps more so than any other antiquarian book, is why it seems to me that Christianity is more likely to be true than any other current religion in the world. But, just because this might be so, doesn't mean that it is so. If one judges Jesus' historicity according to the standards that are applied to most other figures from antiquity (like Hannibal) then perhaps we aren't doing enough as we should be able to do, considering the fact that if we do otherwise, then that would lead us to accept supernatural claims, which to me is anti-intellectual.

So, even if Christianity has more historical evidence on its side than any other religion, that still wouldn't be enough to convince me, at least considering my current views of the supernatural. Or am I wrong reader? Is Christianity as not as historically reliable as I think it is? I don't know. Maybe aliens made Jesus rise from the dead. Stephen Hawking is right about them. They're assholes. And to answer the question, "Did the Jesus of the Gospels exist?" my answer is I don't know.

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Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on October 6, 2010 at 7:09pm

Rorschach -

I'd then add to that "How are we defining 'Historical Jesus?'"

If we are asking "Did Jesus of the Gospels exist?" it's reasonable that what we are looking for is the originator of the ideology found in the gospels and attributed to Jesus. A) There are many authors of that ideology and B) we have no way of knowing what, if any, of those ideological bits might have actually originated with someone named Jesus. Even the most benefit-of-the-doubt evidence we have still can not tell us anything beyond name/place/occupation and some hints at "most likely" ideology.

But did that ideology come from the author of that gospel? From the most charismatic Christian(s) the gospel writers were paying attention to? From a friend of a friend of Jesus? We don't know. We can't know based on what we have.

I've used the comparison elsewhere of searching for "Historical" Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz. Even if we find that Frank Baum knew a farm girl from Kansas named Dorothy Gale, have we found the Dorothy Gale of the book/film? We don't know. We have at best found the person who was the author's inspiration for using that particular name for his character. Whether or not "real" Dorothy bears any further resemblance than that to book-Dorothy, that truth died with the author. Ultimately, only he knows what he made up and what bits of her he felt were crucial to preserve intact.

Likewise, even if we find a real-life Jesus who was the human template for gospel-Jesus, have we necessarily found gospel-Jesus?

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Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 7, 2010 at 7:37pm

There's a slight difference between the historicity of Hannibal and of Jesus: Hannibal actually had contemporaneous, recorded, commentary which was referenced by other observers. Those records existed both on the Roman and Carthaginian side of events. Unfortunately, those originals no longer exist, lost over the course of many centuries. On the other hand, there are no references to contemporaneous records for Jesus. EVERYTHING we know about him originated well after his death (if he even existed at all).

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Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on October 6, 2010 at 2:05pm

--- Lisa --- And without any record, how much truth can there be in something written decades later?

Exactly the questions many of us ask. If it were up to my own immediate family to write down my life story and personal ideology, it wouldn't come anywhere close to reality. To the point that "historical me" will be forever lost behind what my family writes about me. But boy they would be quick to tell everyone that they know the "Real" me, and who would doubt them? After all, these are my parents and my siblings, and why would they/how could they possibly get any of it wrong?

If the task were left not to my family but to people a generation or three after the fact, going based on oral stories they heard from friends of friends of friends of my family, and those writers have an agenda of their own for which they are making me the frontman, I have even less confidence that a single word of it will be accurate.

It might be, but I wouldn't assume it must be accurate until proven otherwise. I'd err on the side of "Spin. Unimaginable amounts of spin."

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Permalink Reply by ajithkumar on October 7, 2010 at 6:55am

we heard about Jesus only through Bible. In history we are studying him only as a founder of Christianity.
We know more about Buddha as a detailed history. same with the Mohamed also. Some think that he actually existed,others think his only as a myth? which is true?

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Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on October 7, 2010 at 11:17am

--- ajithkumar --- we heard about Jesus only through Bible. In history we are studying him only as a founder of Christianity.

This is where I also ask "Define historical Jesus." If historical Jesus is "Someone who founded Christianity," then I'd argue very strongly that no such Jesus existed. If he did, we would expect the first scriptures to have been written during his lifetime, by eye-witnesses and scribes, or even in his own hand. The far more plausible scenario is that there was "A" Jesus who became the handsome face on the cereal box so to speak, but had little or nothing to do with the actual founding of a religion.

Other than being the pretty face that folks rallied around as those others did the actual religion-founding.

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Permalink Reply by nick altman on October 7, 2010 at 11:28am

I don't think I or Matt or anyone else here has for a second suggested he was anything more than an upstart with a small cult that did not flourish until after his death. He probably did not even suggest he was the son of god, he was nothing more than "the pretty face that folks rallied around".

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Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 7, 2010 at 7:39pm

To be an upstart, one must first exist. THAT is the point of contention, as far as I can tell.

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