Ok, even if there was a guy named Jesus (which, like, there were thousands; that name was super popular at the time), this guy wasn’t god. The meme says the bible is their proof that god exists, not that some guy named Jesus existed.
Not really. There is no contemporary evidence and all tales about him were written decades or centuries after his purported life. And even if there was a preacher named Jesus that got executed by the Romans for sedition, that still doesn’t make any of the supernatural claims any more plausible.
Though nearly all modern scholars hold that the passage, in its present form, cannot be authentic; most nevertheless hold that it contains an authentic nucleus referencing the life of Jesus and his execution by Pilate, which was then subjected to Christian interpolation and alteration.
That’s one of the passages. The passage about Jesus being the brother of James is not historically disputed.
I’m willing to concede that original passage likely had the part about him performing miracles and explicitly calling him the Messiah was a later alteration, knowing that Josephus did not convert to Christianity, but the passage was not invented out of whole cloth.
Check out Dr. Bart Ehrman’s book Did Jesus Exist?, he goes over all the evidence.
Every week I receive maybe two or three emails asking me whether Jesus existed as a human being. When I started getting these emails, some years ago now, I thought the question was rather peculiar and I did not take it seriously. Of course Jesus existed. Everyone knows he existed. Don’t they?
But the questions kept coming and soon I began to wonder: why are there so many people asking? My wonder only increased when I learned that I myself was being quoted in some circles – misquoted rather – as saying that Jesus never existed. I decided to look into the matter. As it turns out, to my surprise, there is an entire literature devoted to the question of whether or not there ever was a real man, Jesus.
I was surprised because I am trained as a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity, and for thirty years I have written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Gospels, the early Christian movement, the history of the church’s first three hundred years. Like all New Testament scholars, I have read literally thousands and thousands of books and articles in English and other European languages on Jesus, the New Testament, and early Christianity. But I was almost completely unaware of this body of skeptical literature, except as a slight image on the very periphery of my vision. As are most of my colleagues in this field of scholarship.
Those who do not think Jesus existed are frequently militant in their views and remarkably adept at parrying counter-evidence that to the rest of the civilized world might seem completely compelling and even unanswerable. But these writers have answers, and the smart ones among them need to be taken seriously, if for no other reason than to show why they cannot be right about their major contention. The reality is, whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist. That is what this book will set out to demonstrate.
I hardly need to stress what I have already intimated, that this is the view of virtually every expert on the planet. That in itself is not proof, of course. Expert opinion is, at the end of the day, still opinion. But why would you not want to know what experts have to say?
Okay, that was a whole lot of someone else’s words to say the same thing you said.
I am not reading a whole book to investigate your assertion:
I asked for evidence.
You seem to have read a book that presents it. So give us the actual evidence that book presents. This should be easy, because you’re using that book as said evidence.
Please give us a bulleted list of pieces of evidence from that book that back up your claim.
e: Or just one. Something concrete, like an archaeological artefact.
Know that if you choose to argue against facts attested by the overwhelming majority consensus of scholars, academics and historians then you are the one making extraordinary claims.
If you want to hear him talking on this I suggest skipping to 14:35 since you’re impatient:
Most people in our society probably think that Jesus must have had an enormous effect on the people of his day — not just on his immediate followers. He was, after all, the founder of the most significant religion in the history of Western Civilization.
Unfortunately, the commonsensical view is not even close to being right—biblical epics on the wide screen (the source of many people’s knowledge about the Bible!) notwithstanding. If we look at the historical record itself—and, I should emphasize, for historians there is nothing else to look at—it appears that whatever his influence on subsequent generations, Jesus’ impact on society in the first century was practically nil, less like a comet striking the planet than a stone tossed into the ocean. This becomes especially clear when we consider what his own contemporaries had to say about him.
Pagan sources
Pliny the Younger
The first reference to Jesus in any surviving pagan account does not come until the year 112 CE. It appears in a letter written by a governor of the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus (northwestern part of modern-day Turkey), a Roman official named Pliny. The letter tells us some interesting things about these followers of Jesus. We learn, for example, that they comprised a range of ages and socioeconomic classes, that they met in the early morning before it was light, that they partook of food together, and—the chief point for our present investigation—that they worshiped “Christ as a god.” The name “Jesus” itself is not given here, but it’s pretty clear whom Pliny had in mind. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give us any information about Jesus—for example, who he was, where he lived, what he said or did, or how he died—only that he was worshiped as divine by his followers.
Suetonius
A few years later, the Roman historian Suetonius made a casual comment that some scholars have taken to be a reference to Jesus. Suetonius wrote a set of biographies on the twelve Roman Caesars who had ruled up to his own time, starting with Julius Caesar. There is a lot of valuable historical information in these books, along with a lot of juicy gossip—a gold mine for historians interested in major events of the early Roman Empire. In his Life of Claudius, emperor from 41 to 54 CE, Suetonius mentions riots that had occurred among the Jews in the city of Rome and says that the riots had been instigated by a person named “Chrestus.” Some historians have maintained that this is a misspelling of the name “Christ.” If so, then Suetonius is indicating that some of Jesus’ followers had created havoc in the capital, a view possibly confirmed in the New Testament (see Acts 18:2).
Tacetus
Tacitus is probably best known for the Annals, a sixteen-volume history of the Roman Empire covering 14-68 CE. Probably the most famous passage in the Annals (book 15) reports the megalomania of the emperor Nero, who had Rome torched in order to implement some of his own architectural designs for the city. When he was suspected for the fire, Nero sought to place the blame elsewhere and found in the Christians a ready scapegoat. He rounded up members of this despised sect (Tacitus himself says that the Christians were widely held in contempt for their “hatred of the human race”) and made a public display of them, having some rolled in pitch and set aflame to light his public gardens, and others wrapped in animal skins to be torn to shreds by savage dogs. Nero was not known for his timid tactics. In any event, in the context of his discussion of Nero’s excesses against the Christians, Tacitus does manage to say something about where they had acquired their (to him) strange beliefs and so provides us with the first bit of historical information to be found about Jesus in a pagan author: “Christus, from whom their [i.e., the Christians’] name is derived, was executed at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius” (Annals 15.44). Tacitus goes on to indicate that the “superstition” that emerged in Jesus’ wake first appeared in Judea before spreading to Rome itself.
Early Jewish Sources
Josephus
I’ll take the references in reverse order, since the second is of less historical interest. It occurs in a story about the Jewish high priest Ananus, who abused his power in the year 62 CE by unlawfully putting to death a man named James, whom Josephus identifies as “the brother of Jesus who is called the messiah” (Ant. 20.9,1). From this reference we can learn that there was indeed a man named Jesus (Josephus actually discusses lots of different people with that name—many of them at far greater length than the Jesus we are concerned about), that he had a brother named James (which we already knew from the New Testament; see Mark 6:3 and Gal. 1:19), and that he was thought by some people to be the Jewish messiah. The information is not much, but at least it’s something. I should point out that Josephus himself does not happen to agree with those who called Jesus the messiah. We don’t know how much he knew about the Christians, but it is clear that he remained a non-Christian Jew until his dying day.
Early Christian sources
Documents and oral tradition now lost but existent at time the Gospels were written
All of these written sources I have mentioned are earlier than the surviving Gospels; they all corroborate many of the key things said of Jesus in the Gospels; and most important they are all independent of one another. Let me stress the latter point. We cannot think of the early Christian Gospels as going back to a solitary source that “invented” the idea that there was a man Jesus. The view that Jesus existed is found in multiple independent sources that must have been circulating throughout various regions of the Roman Empire in the decades before the Gospels that survive were produced. Where would the solitary source that “invented” Jesus be? Within a couple of decades of the traditional date of his death, we have numerous accounts of his life found in a broad geographical span. In addition to Mark, we have Q, M (which is possibly made of multiple sources), L (also possibly multiple sources), two or more passion narratives, a signs source, two discourse sources, the kernel (or original) Gospel behind the Gospel of Thomas, and possibly others. And these are just the ones we know about, that we can reasonably infer from the scant literary remains that survive from the early years of the Christian church. No one knows how many there actually were. Luke says there were “many” of them, and he may well have been right. And once again, this is not the end of the story." (page 83)
Q
One of the most controversial and talked-about sources that scholars have used for studying the life of the historical Jesus is, oddly enough, a document that does not exist. Most scholars are reasonably sure, though, that at one time it did exist, and that it can, at least theoretically, be reconstructed. The document is called “Q.” What else did it contain? It certainly had some of the most familiar sayings of Jesus. It contained, for example, the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-23) and the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2-4); it included the commands to love your enemies, not to judge others, and not to worry about what to eat and wear (Luke 6:27—42; 12:22—32); and it provided a number of familiar parables (e.g., Luke 12:39-48; 14:15-24). The reality, though, is that we don’t have a full picture of what Q contained, since our only access to it is through the agreements of Matthew and Luke in passages not found in Mark. So, while we can say what probably was in it, we’re hard-pressed to say what was not.
Can you give me ONE piece of tangible evidence, or can you only write a strawman dissertation?
I don’t care to watch a video or read a book because you can’t plainly state your point.
How about you plainly state your point?
E: not more quotes from books, but contemporaneous records and monuments, archaeological sites, graves of these people – you’ve given me stories. We have a metric shitload of stories and myths. None of that is proof.
Why are you trying to have a debate with me? I’m not a historian. I showed you what the leading historians have to say.
They are the ones who have studied all the sources and know the right answer you want. All I can do is go back and cite when I found them addressing your arguments.
If you are moving the goalposts and starting to demand physical evidence like you need to see Jesus’ shin bone to believe he existed then the problem is that you don’t know how history works. It’s not my fault we don’t have his bones. We don’t have anyone’s bones. I already sent that info to you.
You don’t doubt William Shakespeare and Alexander the Great existed do you?
I already timestamped the exact part of the video where he addresses why no physical evidence exists but also why that’s not a problem.
Just watch the damn thing for 5 minutes.
You’re really demanding I watch the video 18 times and try to type it out for you?
I’m not a believer but their is decent evidence to suggest that Jesus was a real guy.
Ok, even if there was a guy named Jesus (which, like, there were thousands; that name was super popular at the time), this guy wasn’t god. The meme says the bible is their proof that god exists, not that some guy named Jesus existed.
But a schizophrenic guy named Jesus must have been much rarer.
There’s decent evidence Tom Holland is a real guy too
Lies and heresy.
Not really. There is no contemporary evidence and all tales about him were written decades or centuries after his purported life. And even if there was a preacher named Jesus that got executed by the Romans for sedition, that still doesn’t make any of the supernatural claims any more plausible.
Jesus and John the Baptist were historical figures.
That’s still a big maybe.
That’s one of the passages. The passage about Jesus being the brother of James is not historically disputed.
I’m willing to concede that original passage likely had the part about him performing miracles and explicitly calling him the Messiah was a later alteration, knowing that Josephus did not convert to Christianity, but the passage was not invented out of whole cloth.
Yeah, he was a normal guy
“sup, name’s Jesus, you guys into 40k?”
But is there an evidence that he was a son of god?
No. That’s why it’s religion, because it is based on faith. If there were enough evidence then it would be science, or objective fact.
There’s as much evidence to support a dude named Jesus lived in Nazareth, as there is that a guy named Sam lives in current-day New York.
A few hundred to a few thousand Jesuses likely lived in Nazareth.
Who is more likely to be real. Robin Hood or Jesus?
Can you name any such evidence?
Check out Dr. Bart Ehrman’s book Did Jesus Exist?, he goes over all the evidence.
https://ehrmanblog.org/my-book-did-jesus-exist-an-answer-to-the-mythicists/
Okay, that was a whole lot of someone else’s words to say the same thing you said.
I am not reading a whole book to investigate your assertion:
I asked for evidence.
You seem to have read a book that presents it. So give us the actual evidence that book presents. This should be easy, because you’re using that book as said evidence.
Please give us a bulleted list of pieces of evidence from that book that back up your claim.
e: Or just one. Something concrete, like an archaeological artefact.
Know that if you choose to argue against facts attested by the overwhelming majority consensus of scholars, academics and historians then you are the one making extraordinary claims.
If you want to hear him talking on this I suggest skipping to 14:35 since you’re impatient:
https://youtu.be/hnybQxIgfPw
Read through page 55-101 of below:
https://archive.org/details/jesus-apocalyptic-prophet-bart-d.-ehrman/page/55/mode/1up
Pagan sources
Pliny the Younger
Suetonius
Tacetus
Early Jewish Sources
Josephus
Early Christian sources
Documents and oral tradition now lost but existent at time the Gospels were written
Q
Letters of Paul
Matthew, Mark, Luke
Clement of Rome
Ignatius of Antioch
Polycarp of Smyrna
Dead Sea Scrolls
Many more…
Er, what? No, please reread what I said.
Can you give me ONE piece of tangible evidence, or can you only write a strawman dissertation?
I don’t care to watch a video or read a book because you can’t plainly state your point.
How about you plainly state your point?
E: not more quotes from books, but contemporaneous records and monuments, archaeological sites, graves of these people – you’ve given me stories. We have a metric shitload of stories and myths. None of that is proof.
That took an incredible amount of time to format and edit everything in only to receive such a rude dismissive response.
I really hope a lurker appreciates how much effort i spent to give you exactly what you asked for, because you’re a genuinely miserable person.
Asking for more and more sources and info in the manner this guy has is often called clown fishing.
U have gone above and being with sourced and evidence but nothing will be enough for this guy.
I’m not trying to be rude or dismissive, and I promise I’ve read every word you’ve written. I’m a writer; I know how much it takes to write things.
That’s not what this is about. If you need a pat on the back for writing words and using grammar, here you go: nicely done.
Can you give me the actual evidence you’ve been promising, or are we done here?
We’re done here. You have the evidence.
Why are you trying to have a debate with me? I’m not a historian. I showed you what the leading historians have to say.
They are the ones who have studied all the sources and know the right answer you want. All I can do is go back and cite when I found them addressing your arguments.
If you are moving the goalposts and starting to demand physical evidence like you need to see Jesus’ shin bone to believe he existed then the problem is that you don’t know how history works. It’s not my fault we don’t have his bones. We don’t have anyone’s bones. I already sent that info to you.
You don’t doubt William Shakespeare and Alexander the Great existed do you?
I already timestamped the exact part of the video where he addresses why no physical evidence exists but also why that’s not a problem.
Just watch the damn thing for 5 minutes.
You’re really demanding I watch the video 18 times and try to type it out for you?