Does it matter if a Jew named Jesus existed?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Johnsky on October 12, 2009 at 2:02pm

It only matters to the Christians.

Pretty much everything else in the bible is easily debunked. The bible has near zero credibility and many Christians know it. What they want is for at least ONE story of the bible to be real or at least plausible. They're desperate to have a shred of credibility.

In the end though, it doesn't matter. If there was a Jew alive at the time with the name Jesus who liked to preach to people... then that's all it means.
But to the Christians it means everything.

Desperation. What a sad sad thing it is.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nate on October 12, 2009 at 2:13pm

They're desperate to have a shred of credibility.

Both very true and ironic, since a faith based on evidence is really no faith at all.

I think it's important to avoid a dogmatic position one way or another as atheists. To insist that no such man existed seems to smack of wanting him not to exist. To say that the evidence is inconclusive for or against and his mere existence, if substantiated, irrelevant to supporting the supernatural claims surrounding him seems more intellectually honest and rational.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Marshall on October 12, 2009 at 2:17pm

It would actually confirm my theory about him.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Sonny Mobley on October 13, 2009 at 12:19pm

It doesn't matter one way or another. I am sure that a million jews named jesus have existed. :D Even if we could absolutely verify the existence of THE Jesus it wouldn't matter to me. Just one in a long line of crackpots that have walked among man since the dawn of thought. - Like me!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Clifford Gliddon on October 13, 2009 at 1:05pm

The existence of a man has no bearing on the existence of gods, claims about the xtian trinity notwithstanding. If I were to proselytize xtianity, I would actually be more comfortable without a shred of evidence. The absence of any evidence whatsoever for the Christ, the actual anointed one, lends a purity to faith that could easily be sullied by something as mundane as factual inquiry.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by MountainHumanist on October 13, 2009 at 4:57pm

I asked my believing wife if it mattered and she said "yes." But, I think her faith is slipping like mine did. One thing I respect about Buddhists is that some sects claim it really doesn't matter to their religious practice if the Buddha ever existed. The point for them are the principles not the founder. If one views Christianity through a mythical lens (like Joseph Campbell) the historicity of Jesus is not important on the archetypal qualities the character observed.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jo Jerome on October 13, 2009 at 6:03pm

"I'm not asking if you believe that such a person could have existed in the first century C.E. I'm asking if you think that it matters."

It matters in part because proof of life would indeed be a big deal historically. Fundie Xians everywhere would take it as proof of every word of the Gospels. But I imagine empirically it would do more to debunk the Gospels.

Personally, I'd be surprised if there weren't a few real persons who inspired the Jesus story - or rather, the casserole of local god-myths being mashed together onto one person. Yeshu/Yeshua/Yeshuara was a very common name and itinerant street preachers were a dime a dozen during that time. When tall tales get passed down, different players of the same name tend to get lumped together as one. Or, someone latches onto a famous figure and all tall tales/memorable deeds get credited to that person.

But I imagine if we found the/a real historical figure to whom we can trace the life of Jesus, we will certainly find that he was not THE Jesus of the bible and did not make nearly the splash in his lifetime as the faithful would like to think he did.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jessica Bern on October 23, 2009 at 9:08pm

and i think maybe he existed as a man. an ordinary man. but nothing powerful or having the word of god in him.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Martin Allen on October 23, 2009 at 10:24pm

does it matter? not in the slightest. let's move on

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Russell Blackford on October 23, 2009 at 11:16pm

I'm pretty sure that one or more apocalyptic prophets matching this description existed. It doesn't change the fact that the gospels are heavily mythologised and theologised, mutually contradictory accounts, written long after the events that they described.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James M. Martin on October 24, 2009 at 9:39pm

The compilers of the N.T. really blew it when they portrayed Simon Magus in Acts as an evil, self-aggrandizing man who claimed miraculous powers. It so happens that the so-called Holy Land was full of these types in the early 1st century C.E. If one reads the fragments of Simon's forgotten faith in the writings of G. R. S. Mead one comes away with an entirely different portrait of Simon: a mystic and Gnostic, a man who preached very similar ideas to those of Reb Yeshua. If I were a Nikos Kazantzakis I might fashion a very fine novel showing them as rival magicians, men who sought to be top banana amidst a scramble by dozens of pretenders to the throne to be the Prophetic Messiah. No one really won, but Saul/Paul the pirate saw to it that Reb Yeshua became "Christos" and that his (very likely staged) death and resurrection were the work of the Essene Reb Joseph, the Aremathean.

(Other Gnostics believed, just as Kazantzakis wrote, that Reb Jeshua survived his crucifixion; others that the person actually crucified was Simon the Cyrenean, who carried the cross most of the way to Golgotha. One Gnostic scripture even had Reb Jeshua standing on a hill overlooking the scene and laughing when he said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," implying mockery of the Romans for having, Gov. Bush-style, executed the wrong man.) But the Arimathean had tinctures and such that could easily have put a man to sleep -- Shakespeare deals with it in Romeo and Juliet -- then revive him in case of resurrection need.

Things got garbled quickly because the Booble was written in koine Greek, which had absolutely no punctuation, such that "GOD IS NOW HERE" could just as easily be translated as "GOD IS NOWHERE."

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jack Russell on October 24, 2009 at 11:14pm

It personally does not matter to me directly, but it does matter to me indirectly.
In otherwords, since it matters to others, it affects my life.

If Jesus was a real person, it really makes some of the de-conversion stuff I do a lot easier.

Read some of my Blog Articles.
Jesus is a chimera
Virgin Mary taken in Prima Nocta
Jesus is a bastard (love child, nullius filius) ?

--Jack

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next ›
• Page