He was most likely a real guy. But a guy Christian’s would absolutely hate: a brown Communist Palestinian who hung out with prostitutes, lepers, pariahs, refuted the legitimacy of the state, and organized massive mutual aid events to feed the poor. Probably a good dude. It’s a shame his followers are dicks though.
I’m starting to think he wasn’t all that great. He would have been someone who started a little apocalyptic religious following around himself, and those kind of people don’t tend to have the best interests of their followers at heart.
He probably did see himself as starting something that would kick the Romans out of Judea and install himself as king. Judas got cold feet about it and warned the authorities. The Romans crucified him for exactly what the gospel accounts say, except they had a lot more evidence than the writers were letting on.
I’m an anti-theist, and I used to be on this page, but a while ago I read about how even this might not be true. We don’t have any real proof he existed at all.
Right. It’s applying the same standard of evidence that we use for everything else on history. Truth is, we don’t have great evidence for pretty much anyone who wasn’t a regional ruler. If you rose the standard much higher, you’d end up with history being a big blank, and that’s not useful.
In other words, if you reject a historical Jesus outright, you also have to reject Socrates and Spartacus and a whole lot of others.
I’m surprised that Socrates denialism isn’t a thing tbh. Plato’s Socrates is really a sockpuppet for Plato, read Xenophon and you get someone very different.
And as you read through you will notice a heavy bias towards the assumption he did exist…but again, without proof. It’s kind of silly the lie he was real is so prevalent.
Each attempt to prove his existence relied on very loose reasoning. The closest they have ever come breaks down to one actual historical figure who wasn’t a Christian mentioning some thieves who believed in Jesus numerous decades after Jesus supposedly died - which for a long time was proof enough…somehow.
At this point scholars have admitted they will never have actual proof that he existed - that proof is “ultimately unattainable”. And much like you noted with “political impact” they have moved the goal posts to the impact on society the concept of Jesus had as their proof. So… yeah, definitely not proven.
What did you expect? We’re talking about one guy who might have lived over 2000 years ago. You’re not going to find his birth certificate and social security number.
The best anyone can do is assign a probability to his existence. And reading the article you yourself linked to, that probability seems to be pretty high.
The best anyone can do is assign a probability to his existence
For a person that is considered an actual god, we should expect more than “probable” existence. I think pointing out the lack of evidence for a supposed god is perfectly acceptable.
You’re missing the point or you’re being deliberately obtuse. Either way, nobody’s trying to prove that Jesus Christ existed in this thread (at least, nobody that is arguing in good faith - no pun intended). We’re talking about the real guy that MOST LIKELY really existed but, putting aside his supposed divine heritage, would have been basically a regular guy back then.
How Jesus Became God covers that process. Early Christianity was very complicated and divergent. Some groups thought Jesus was just a guy, others that he was just a guy who was raised to divinity, and still others that he was divine from the start. And then even among those who thought he had some sort of divinity, not all of them agreed with the trinity idea. And then Gnositcs come along and have a whole different cosmology about everything.
The Council of Nicaea didn’t come up with anything on its own. It was an official stamp on what set of existing ideas were considered orthodox or not.
We have two sources for Spartacus: Plutarch of Chaeronea and Appian of Alexandria. Both were written a century after he died. The two accounts mostly agree, but in the middle of the story they go completely different directions and then meet up again for the ending.
Spartacus is generally regarded as existing. We don’t know which account had it right, and it’s possible neither of them are. We will probably never know.
Point is, if you’re not a ruler, then historical evidence of your existence tends to be thin. Jesus likely existed, and we have better evidence for him than Spartacus.
Might not be intentional lie. Take for example how we today call government “Uncle Sam”. It’s not hard to imagine made up person back in the day used for similar purposes so records survived but there’s no physical evidence. We do it all the time, witches, santa claus, boogeyman, etc.
Note how the article uses the word “scholars” as opposed to scientists. Scientists would simply state that there is no actual evidence about the existence of this guy so this is all speculation.
Then you have to do the same for a huge number of other historical figures. You end up with history being a huge blank beyond people who were rulers. That’s not useful, and not necessary.
What historical figures do you have in mind? The difference between a historical and a mythical person is the evidence available for their existence. History (the scientific kind) has a pretty clear idea which is which.
I’ll copy my writeup from elsewhere in the thread.
We have two sources for Spartacus: Plutarch of Chaeronea and Appian of Alexandria. Both were written a century after he died. The two accounts mostly agree, but in the middle of the story they go completely different directions and then meet up again for the ending.
Spartacus is generally regarded as existing. We don’t know which account had it right, and it’s possible neither of them are. We will probably never know.
Point is, if you’re not a ruler, then historical evidence of your existence tends to be thin. Jesus likely existed, and we have better evidence for him than Spartacus.
When did I say that? I said there’s no definitive proof. That’s not denying the possibility that the guy actually existed. But as you said, the evidence is rather thin.
James Cameron did a national geographic documentary proving the guy existed. They found his ostuary. Which fits the time period. It was some astronomically absurd chance that it wasn’t him. Since everyone in the tomb had the family names of all of his relatives. Something like it was a 1 in 10 million chance that it wasn’t the nuclear family’s buried remains.
That is hilariously untrue, have you any idea how big that news would be? They don’t even know if Arimathea was a real place, we certainly don’t know about Jesus family - none of them are mentioned outside the limited references in the Bible
There’s not much actual evidence for a lot of people of the period (e.g., Pontius Pilate) outside of historical writings. That’s pretty ludicrous way to rationalize a petty belief.
The standard for judging a person as historical as opposed to mythical is that there multiple independent contemporary sources. Neither of which exist for Jesus so saying he definitely existed is rationalizing a petty belief.
Settled by whom? The world dominated by Christian nations to boost their own influence? This is like Indian scholars saying all their gods are real and definitely existed and selectively citing texts written to confirm that bias. History isn’t as clear cut as you think it is.
Believe it or not people lied since the they began to talk. Just because there’s some text doesn’t make it entirely accurate.
All you’ve proven is that you haven’t engaged with the scholarly arguments for historical Jesus at all. A bunch of them are not kind to a fundamentalist position. For example, there’s an argument that the census story around Jesus’ birth is a fabrication–there’s no evidence for a Roman census around that time, and why would everyone need to travel to their birth town for this?–but the fact that they’re sticking it there is because they had to deal with Jesus being an actual guy from Nazareth. They really, really want to attach him to King David by having him be born in Bethlehem, and him coming from Nazareth gets in the way of that. So they create this whole weird census story to make up for it.
No matter if you agree with this take or not, it’s clear no fundie would come up with that or accept it.
I’m about as atheist as they come, but it seems pretty settled history that the man existed and was politically impactful
He was most likely a real guy. But a guy Christian’s would absolutely hate: a brown Communist Palestinian who hung out with prostitutes, lepers, pariahs, refuted the legitimacy of the state, and organized massive mutual aid events to feed the poor. Probably a good dude. It’s a shame his followers are dicks though.
Removed by mod
I’m starting to think he wasn’t all that great. He would have been someone who started a little apocalyptic religious following around himself, and those kind of people don’t tend to have the best interests of their followers at heart.
He probably did see himself as starting something that would kick the Romans out of Judea and install himself as king. Judas got cold feet about it and warned the authorities. The Romans crucified him for exactly what the gospel accounts say, except they had a lot more evidence than the writers were letting on.
The bible Jesus probably never existed, but there were clearly a guy a lot of people followed called Jesus that the romains crucified.
Except his name was probably some version of Joshua. The Jesus spelling comes from the Greek, where a lot of masculine names end in -s.
Yeshua is one I’ve heard used for his historical name.
Wasn’t it the icebergs that crucified him?
No you’re thinking of the other thing people worship… that passenger ship they made a movie about.
It was definitely the arugala that kaled him.
PILATE: “Are you the King of the Jews?”
JESUS: “No.” (strikes t-pose) “I’m the King of the World!!!”
Yeah, disbelieving in the existence of Jesus the Jewish carpenter is about as silly as disbelieving in the existence of Pontius Pilate.
I’m an anti-theist, and I used to be on this page, but a while ago I read about how even this might not be true. We don’t have any real proof he existed at all.
Where’d you read that? Here are at least the known sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus
There’s way less evidence of a ton of historical figures and events that are taken for granted as established history. Just my two cents
Right. It’s applying the same standard of evidence that we use for everything else on history. Truth is, we don’t have great evidence for pretty much anyone who wasn’t a regional ruler. If you rose the standard much higher, you’d end up with history being a big blank, and that’s not useful.
In other words, if you reject a historical Jesus outright, you also have to reject Socrates and Spartacus and a whole lot of others.
Spartacus was real. I know because I’m Spartacus.
I’m Spartacus!
I’m surprised that Socrates denialism isn’t a thing tbh. Plato’s Socrates is really a sockpuppet for Plato, read Xenophon and you get someone very different.
I’ve ran into a few times in these sorts of Jesus Don’t Real threads. At least it’s applying the standard of evidence consistently.
Real talk, he hasn’t been proven to exist. Not even a little.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
And as you read through you will notice a heavy bias towards the assumption he did exist…but again, without proof. It’s kind of silly the lie he was real is so prevalent.
Each attempt to prove his existence relied on very loose reasoning. The closest they have ever come breaks down to one actual historical figure who wasn’t a Christian mentioning some thieves who believed in Jesus numerous decades after Jesus supposedly died - which for a long time was proof enough…somehow.
At this point scholars have admitted they will never have actual proof that he existed - that proof is “ultimately unattainable”. And much like you noted with “political impact” they have moved the goal posts to the impact on society the concept of Jesus had as their proof. So… yeah, definitely not proven.
What did you expect? We’re talking about one guy who might have lived over 2000 years ago. You’re not going to find his birth certificate and social security number.
The best anyone can do is assign a probability to his existence. And reading the article you yourself linked to, that probability seems to be pretty high.
For a person that is considered an actual god, we should expect more than “probable” existence. I think pointing out the lack of evidence for a supposed god is perfectly acceptable.
You’re missing the point or you’re being deliberately obtuse. Either way, nobody’s trying to prove that Jesus Christ existed in this thread (at least, nobody that is arguing in good faith - no pun intended). We’re talking about the real guy that MOST LIKELY really existed but, putting aside his supposed divine heritage, would have been basically a regular guy back then.
That came later, first council of nicaea was where the thing with holy trinity was made.
How Jesus Became God covers that process. Early Christianity was very complicated and divergent. Some groups thought Jesus was just a guy, others that he was just a guy who was raised to divinity, and still others that he was divine from the start. And then even among those who thought he had some sort of divinity, not all of them agreed with the trinity idea. And then Gnositcs come along and have a whole different cosmology about everything.
The Council of Nicaea didn’t come up with anything on its own. It was an official stamp on what set of existing ideas were considered orthodox or not.
Literally everything about Jesus came later, though.
We have two sources for Spartacus: Plutarch of Chaeronea and Appian of Alexandria. Both were written a century after he died. The two accounts mostly agree, but in the middle of the story they go completely different directions and then meet up again for the ending.
Spartacus is generally regarded as existing. We don’t know which account had it right, and it’s possible neither of them are. We will probably never know.
Point is, if you’re not a ruler, then historical evidence of your existence tends to be thin. Jesus likely existed, and we have better evidence for him than Spartacus.
Might not be intentional lie. Take for example how we today call government “Uncle Sam”. It’s not hard to imagine made up person back in the day used for similar purposes so records survived but there’s no physical evidence. We do it all the time, witches, santa claus, boogeyman, etc.
Note how the article uses the word “scholars” as opposed to scientists. Scientists would simply state that there is no actual evidence about the existence of this guy so this is all speculation.
Then you have to do the same for a huge number of other historical figures. You end up with history being a huge blank beyond people who were rulers. That’s not useful, and not necessary.
What historical figures do you have in mind? The difference between a historical and a mythical person is the evidence available for their existence. History (the scientific kind) has a pretty clear idea which is which.
I’ll copy my writeup from elsewhere in the thread.
We have two sources for Spartacus: Plutarch of Chaeronea and Appian of Alexandria. Both were written a century after he died. The two accounts mostly agree, but in the middle of the story they go completely different directions and then meet up again for the ending.
Spartacus is generally regarded as existing. We don’t know which account had it right, and it’s possible neither of them are. We will probably never know.
Point is, if you’re not a ruler, then historical evidence of your existence tends to be thin. Jesus likely existed, and we have better evidence for him than Spartacus.
That’s the whole point. We assume the guy existed but there’s no proof.
So you’re going to deny the existence of Spartacus? Really?
When did I say that? I said there’s no definitive proof. That’s not denying the possibility that the guy actually existed. But as you said, the evidence is rather thin.
James Cameron did a national geographic documentary proving the guy existed. They found his ostuary. Which fits the time period. It was some astronomically absurd chance that it wasn’t him. Since everyone in the tomb had the family names of all of his relatives. Something like it was a 1 in 10 million chance that it wasn’t the nuclear family’s buried remains.
That is hilariously untrue, have you any idea how big that news would be? They don’t even know if Arimathea was a real place, we certainly don’t know about Jesus family - none of them are mentioned outside the limited references in the Bible
The Lost Tomb of Jesus https://g.co/kgs/A1gqTdn
The fact remains that there is no actual evidence for the existence of the guy so ultimately it’s all speculative.
There’s not much actual evidence for a lot of people of the period (e.g., Pontius Pilate) outside of historical writings. That’s pretty ludicrous way to rationalize a petty belief.
The standard for judging a person as historical as opposed to mythical is that there multiple independent contemporary sources. Neither of which exist for Jesus so saying he definitely existed is rationalizing a petty belief.
Settled by whom? The world dominated by Christian nations to boost their own influence? This is like Indian scholars saying all their gods are real and definitely existed and selectively citing texts written to confirm that bias. History isn’t as clear cut as you think it is.
Believe it or not people lied since the they began to talk. Just because there’s some text doesn’t make it entirely accurate.
It’s actually not even remotely like that in any way
All you’ve proven is that you haven’t engaged with the scholarly arguments for historical Jesus at all. A bunch of them are not kind to a fundamentalist position. For example, there’s an argument that the census story around Jesus’ birth is a fabrication–there’s no evidence for a Roman census around that time, and why would everyone need to travel to their birth town for this?–but the fact that they’re sticking it there is because they had to deal with Jesus being an actual guy from Nazareth. They really, really want to attach him to King David by having him be born in Bethlehem, and him coming from Nazareth gets in the way of that. So they create this whole weird census story to make up for it.
No matter if you agree with this take or not, it’s clear no fundie would come up with that or accept it.