Lately I’ve heard people attacking the veracity of the fairy tale book with statements like “Jesus wasn’t real” or it was a psy op operation by the Romans that got out of control. And I hate talking about reddit but it’s basically the atheism mods policy over there that Jesus wasn’t real.
I usually rely on the Wikipedia as my litmus test through life, which shouldn’t work in theory but is great in practice:
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
Virtually all scholars agree that a Jewish man called Jesus of Nazareth did exist in Palestine in the 1st century CE. The contrary perspective, that Jesus was mythical, is regarded as a fringe theory.
Edit: My suggestion to any who would like to see my opinion changed (see above quote) is to get on the Wikipedia and work towards changing the page. My upvote goes to Flying Squid for reminding us “does not matter at all because that’s not who Christians worship”
Edit 2: practicality changed to practice
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Personally, I think there was indeed a Jesus that the Bible character was loosely based on.
It seems more likely that a bunch of religious myths accumulated around a real rabbi than that they all got made up whole cloth.
The “brother of James” comment from Josephus seems to be real and not added on by pious frauds later. However, as others have pointed out, the name was common back then, as was James. As such, it is definitely plausible that this was another semi-famous Jesus.
There’s two things:
- A real person named Yeshua, that we know almost nothing about
- A mythical character named Jesus, who may be loosely based on Yeshua
When the question “Did Jesus exist?” is asked, the subtext usually conflates the two, with the answer about there being a real Yeshua being used as proof that the mythical character Jesus was or was not real. But they’re different.
Abraham Lincoln existed. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter didn’t.
There are plenty of historians that think Mythicism should be taken seriously.
There was likely a failed apocalyptic preacher at that time. That’s it.
I guess the way I see it, it doesn’t matter if a person named Jesus existed or not. “Love your neighbor” is a good message, regardless of who said it. I think people get too bogged down in “proving” what they believe to be historical events portrayed in the Bible that they miss the point entirely. They see loving your neighbor as something to worry about once you’ve gotten the important parts out of the way: convincing everyone that Jesus came back from the dead and Mary was a virgin. If all you care about is “these historical events happened” and you don’t care about the message of the person you claim to worship, what’s the point?
There could have been a guy named Willy Wonka but that doesn’t make that book’s story real either.
Sure, Jesus existed the same way Superman existed.
Note that it says “scholars”, not “scientists”. Most of those scholars will be theologians, which will hardly argue against the basis for their own livelihood. The fact is that there’s no definitive evidence about the guy so this is all conjecture.
Yes, there probably are real people on which the story is based. No, the stories involving to him are not actually true. c.f.: King Arthur
Virtually all scholars agree that a Jewish man called Jesus of Nazareth did exist in Palestine in the 1st century CE.
Jesus’s name was not actually Jesus; it was probably closer to Yeshua. “Jesus” comes to us via transliteration from Aramaic to Greek to Latin.
Lots of historical figures, even recent ones, are a blend of man and myth. In the case of Jesus we have the New Testiment, which is mostly mythical and not really evidence of the man himself.
Having said that, a lot of real regular people existed 2000 years ago that we don’t have hard evidence or first hand accounts of. So personally I just don’t know.
You have to look at what proof they are using and how good it is. Read the specifics on the proof. Its all crap and circular. Josephus got his info from chrisitians of the time after christ. Likely there was something somewhere that started it but who knows what. Look at Qanon. Straight up bullshit and it has a following of believers. Jesus might be as real as Q.
Give “The Christ Conspiracy” by Acharya S a read. It goes in-depth into how the whole Jesus thing was a myth based on other myths.
I read Wikipedia, the burns of historians reviewing this book are fantastic
Mainstream scholars are rejecting this book but they don’t give a valid reason too.
Believing in Jesus’ existence seems to inherently involve believing in the Virgin Birth, doesn’t it? Personally, I find the idea of a virgin birth quite challenging to accept. It seems to defy the basic principles of biology as we understand them. What are your thoughts on this?
The question of the historicity of Jesus does not deal with any of the supernatural claims. It attempts to answer how Christianity started from a historical perspective. It is a debate between a real but ordinary person; or a fictional creation, the angel Jesus, from which the apostles “received revelation” in much the same way as Joseph Smith did from Moroni, Mohammad from Gabriel, and many modern pastors do from Jesus.
So, no, the virgin birth narrative is irrelevant to any historical Jesus. That was created decades after the beginning of Christianity as a response to the gospel of Mark saying Jesus was from Nazareth, but some readers and authors of the later gospels thought prophecy said the messiah would be from Bethlehem.
Why do we believe that Mary was a virgin? It’s usually said as a joke, but it’s entirely possible that she cheated on Joseph and when she became pregnant from that, she came up with this story of the angel and the Virgin Birth…
There are literally no authentic contemporary accounts of the miracles performed by whoever “Jesus” was supposed to be.
Someone would have wrote about that shit at the time & not waited for ~80 years.
