This is intended as a thread about historicity, not divinity. Was there a sect leader named Yeshua (or some variant o Yeshua) that directly or indirectly inspired Christianity?
I saw there probably was, it seems to make sense, but, since no actual fact or data support that point, I’m going to say…
Most likely there was some real individual that the myths were formed around. It seems hard to imagine how the early Christians would have been able to make up the person of Jesus and convince other people who were living in that time and place that he was real.
From the presence of a lot of schisms, at the same time as Paul, and due to the various Biblical references to things which seem unnecessarily bland and/or embarrassing, I think it’s pretty safe to conclude that there was a real Jesus.
I think that Christianity owes about 10% of its doctrine to Jesus and 80% to St. Paul but, nevertheless, I think that Jesus existed.
Obligatory Wikipedia link on the Historicity of Jesus.
I have little doubt, personally speaking, that there existed at least one rabbi named Yeshua, and at least one rebel leader named Yeshua, any or all of whom could have been the basis for the Jesus of the Gospels. But one single Yeshua ben Yosef who did all the things attributed to Jesus of Nazareth? To my mind, terribly unlikely.
That time of year again?
How many independent sources do we have of Jesus’ life?
I think it is more likely that Jesus did exist, but a lot of what we do know came to us with a lot of changes.
Even how he looked was changed a lot:
And like in the recreation made recently of how a Jew from the region looked like, with a light brown complexion.
I see now that ambushed has been trying to ambush me on the subject and seems to think that we have unfinished business in arguing the topic, but I never saw his replies until now. I’m happy to continue, if he sees this.
Of course the likes of Jesus christ and muhammad are complete bullshit. They may have existed but they were just some guys that were full of shit. There are not many things that are a guarantee. There may be a god. Who knows. But what we can guarantee is that Christians and Muslims are fucking retarded.
We will find out when we die. Most likely it will just be lights out and that’s it. So then I quess we won’t find out.
I’m not a mythicist, but I think one of them would point out that they didn’t need to convince anyone living at the time, because the myths were developed over a few decades. By the time they were written down, no one alive at the time of his alleged life would be around to dispute it.
The whole question shouldn’t have any practical matter. Sure, it’s interesting in an idle curiosity kind of way, but that’s it. It’s like asking whether there really was a lumberjack named Paul Bunyan that the myth was based on. Well, maybe, but if we have millions and millions of people who believe that there was a 50-foot-tall lumberjack who could fell whole forests with one swing of his axe, the question of whether the myth could have been based on a real human isn’t really addressing the point of the matter.
Do any of those threads contain any actual factual evidence that “Jesus” existed?
There’s much in the Gospels that is almost surely false. But there are also several details which would probably not have been written unless they were true.
Even ignoring interpolations, Josephus’ writings imply historicity. But even without Josephus, Occam’s Razor applied to internal Gospel evidence makes the story of the crucified healer very likely.
Evidence is scant for ancient people. Pontius Pilate, far more prominent contemporaneously, is only barely attested. Only a single non-biblical reference to King David has turned up, and it is controversial.
such as?
There have been lots of different versions of spiderman in comics and movies. As far as I know, however, in all of them: Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider. He is a super hero who shoots webs and fights bad guys. He has spider sense and spider strength. There is internal consistency.
So in other words, there is no evidence.
Depending on how conspiratorial you feel like getting, you could make an argument for everything previous to 1900 being a lie, manufactured by some mischievous group and cleverly maintained by their cabal of historians and archaeologists. There’s no way to prove anything if you rule out all evidence.
But, take for example Shakespeare. There’s many erudite (and less erudite) explanations for why Shakespeare isn’t a real person. But they all rely on the evidence they choose to include and didn’t include all the evidence that points to a simple and much less grand reality. Shakespeare had children, for example. And he had a granddaughter. We have paintings of many of these people and, presumably, documentation on them to boot (I’m not completely up on my Shakespearean conspiracy theories). So which is more likely, that some noble person pretended to be a playwright and then went to the further hassle of creating marriage certificates, a will, a tombstone, and three generations of descendants, or that Shakespeare was a real person?
Similarly, it’s entirely possible that someone created the Jesus character and then proceeded to make up a bunch of mundane trivia about him (like that he grew up in a shanty town and was friends with a popular rabbi who preached baptism and the sanctity of marriage, but definitely wasn’t one of his followers and definitely didn’t copy any of his teachings). There’s no way to prove, at this juncture, that Jesus existed and there’s definitely no way to prove that a conspiracy to create Jesus didn’t exist. The question is purely, “What is the most likely case?”
Well, most likely the history we know about the pre-1900 world is largely non-fabricated; most likely Shakespeare was a middle class guy with a natural talent for language; and most likely Jesus was a guy who preached some religion around 30AD.
Well at least we agree there is no proof that he existed.
We have no proof of anything existing. I could be a figment of your imagination and you might be an AI training in a simulated reality prior to first boot.
We do have evidence and reason though.
and how likely, in %, do you think it is that we are not real but a simulated reality
In the 1970’s and 1980’s (and decades before) people thought TV wrestling was real.
Internal consistency by itself is no proof of course. But the Bible has internal consistency that matches much of what we know are true facts–the names of neighboring tribes, Persian kings and Roman ceasars, the plants and animals mentioned, the coins used, the social customs of the times etc
Shoko Asahara, Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, and Muhammad existed and did some pretty crazy things. Jesus, Buddha, and Zoroaster? Sure, why not.