Pretty sure Cecil himself has an article on this…
Yes, Jesus really lived. Whether you believe he is the son of God is up to you. But various historical texts point toward him being a real person.
It honestly kinda baffles me the lengths people go to deny Christians even this. You certainly don’t have to believe anything mystical about him. But proclaiming it’s impossible for him to have existed at all just comes off as desperate. We have even less historical text on other figures whose existence is accepted. Why is Jesus the one you feel you need to rally against?
Ever heard of a guy named Joseph Smith?
This is a pretty good primer.
Even when one grants that this Jesus character existed, I think the “opposition” movement has done a good job of highlighting just how nebulous the historical Jesus is.
One of the methods in which Christians try to distance themselves from the less savory aspects of the Bible, both new and old testaments, is to fall back on “Oh. Well, yeah, all those people who follow the OT and the Pauline Epistles are True Christians. Me, I base my life and my faith off what Jesus actually said.”
Except we have very little reason to believe that any of Jesus’ true teachings are actually captured in the Bible, no more reason to believe the words attributed to him are of any greater significance than the words attributed to (but almost certainly not written by the even less historical) Moses. It all comes down to scribes with their own motives, and the differences in the Jesus presented in even the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) ought to be telling.
You say there’s good evidence for a historical Jesus, as good as any other historical figure or better, and certainly better than all the other supernatural entities purported to exist in antiquity. Fine. But what did he actually say? What did he actually do? As a matter of theology, it’s whatever the canonical Gospels say he said and did (even where they disagree, somehow, through faith they don’t :rolleyes:). As a matter of history, though, based on actual evidence, there’s not much at all we can say about him. Which doesn’t bode well for Christianity as being the One True Faith (and probably explains why there really is no such thing as a singular Christianity, but rather Christianities—all the various sects and denominations that hang their hat on this verse or that as if it wasn’t all or almost all made up from a hundred words or less that some scribe working decades after Jesus’ purported death heard about him from some passing goat herder, tent maker, or leather salesman).
People can’t even agree if Shakespeare existed in the form commonly accepted, and that was only 500 years ago.
Plus, no one is saying that if I don’t accept Shakespeare as my personal Lord and Savior (and donate to a slush fund set up in His name) that I’ll go to hell. To the extent people are demanding the works and words of Shakespeare be taught in our schools, it seems to be out of a genuine (if sometimes misguided) belief that those works and words are of historical or literary significance, and not necessarily the sort of thing that should go on to form the basis for our entire world view. No says, seriously anyway, “Because it’s in Shakespeare, it must be true and we should live our lives by it.”
The stakes are higher with Jesus. The demand for “near certainty” (from people who as a rule would generally grant that absolute certainty cannot exist) is greater for Jesus than for, say, Lucius Vorenus (sp, probably) who is attested to in only a single passage from Julius Caesar’s commentaries (commentaries which, unlike the Gospels, actually claim to have been written by the man they are attributed to—writing first hand, appear to reliably date to the time they were supposed to have been written, and seem to match up extensively with other contemporary records and historical record). It may be that this Lucius Vorenus character never actually existed, and it was just a nice story that Caesar made up, but then it doesn’t really matter does it? That it’s a story at all still tells us something about the attitudes of those who related it and considered it to be a good example of virtue among Roman soldiers.
How much was written about John the Baptist, probably as famous as Jesus during his life? Josephus mentions him. Others?
Recall again the sparse evidence for Pontius Pilate, clearly more famous and important than Jesus at the time.
None of these are convincing. See above for #1. As for #2 – Jesus was from Nazareth and the names of his family of orientation are known. What more would you expect? The nativity stories are fabricated. #3, #4, #5 are all compatible with standard assumptions. Contradictions in the Easter story actually point toward authenticity! If the story were a fabricated hoax, one could expect the Gospel writers to adhere to a particular hoax story. Instead they report variations on narratives that were already very old.
Although some of the Gospels may have been written late, Paul the Apostle was writing his epistles about 50 AD, and he implies that Christian churches are already well established, in Jerusalem, Rome and elsewhere, and already have contradictory doctrines — barely two decades after the Crucifixion! Is this compatible with any hoax hypothesis? Surely Saints Peter and Paul (and James the Righteous) are considered historic.
Modifications to Josephus’ work by early Christians is a controversial debate topic. Here’s a 29-page pdf that goes into great detail, apparently concluding that Josephus may not have mentioned Jesus at all!
But with or without Josephus, Occam’s Razor makes it extremely likely that Jesus did exist. Why place a fictional character in the tiny backwater village of Nazareth, running a risk of a hoax being outed? (“My grandmother knew all the Nazareth families and she doesn’t remember any Jesus son of Mary.”) There are a few passages in the Gospels which almost contradict a Messiah narrative. What’s the reason for their inclusion … if not truth? This is especially true of redactions in the Gosepl of Mark, known to us by letters of Clement, Bishop of Rome.
But most simply: Why bother to invent a fictional Messiah? There were plenty of real preachers to choose from, most notably John the Baptist.
I’ll never understand why the Christian concept of faith in Jesus requires irrefutable evidence of his existence. Wouldn’t it be a bigger miracle if he never existed yet still founded a vast global religion based on his own faith?
Anyhoo, some Quakers deal with this through the concept of a ‘Christ Era’ or ‘Christ Time’, not dependent on an actual Jesus but believing in the spirit of Christianity spreading among people at that time. Don’t take that as too detailed of a look at Quaker theology, you’d have to ask one to get those details, and my tolerance for listening to Quakers is rather limited these days.
The only events in Jesus’s life there are no historical records for other than the New Testament are Herod’s slaughter of the innocents and his walking around after being killed.
Did he exist? Probably. But I do not buy into the resurrection.
What are the “events in Jesus’ life” you’re referring to, then? That he was born and died? Because even those two facts—that he was born and died—are themselves mere extrapolations based on the assumption that since he is maybe mentioned once in a non-biblical source as a living or once-living man, and since all men must be born and all men must die, that he must therefore have been born and died, because the alternative hypothesis (that he existed, but didn’t necessarily die and/or get born) would be both ridiculous and, strangely, what is accepted as a matter of faith by many Christians.
“…he was probably the son of somebody.”
Since we are discussing sacrilege, I’ll say that I was always disappointed by that response, and especially that phrasing. Saying something is probably does little to resolve a dispute.
Besides the absolute dearth of evidence of the supernatural, (sure, the Romans killed a bunch of folk, but how often did the skies burst into flame?), there’s the other gap - even if there WAS some schmoe named Jesus (as I understand it, not an uncommon name) running around back then and even if SOMEONE called him Christ (and as I understand it, no shortage of "Messiahs back then, either), why should we believe that any single specific human was the source of all of the material in the gospels?
I mean, I’ve seen plenty of rabbits - some of whom are likely siblings, but I have no reason to believe there was any one specific Br’er Rabbit that the stories are based on!
I think extremely likely is stretching it. But I do tend to concur on the level of more likely than not. There is a reasonable enough amount of circumstantial evidence that I tend to accept that there was such a person, with the caveat that it is entirely possible there was not.
I don’t regard it as a particularly important question as I’m not a believer. So from my perspective it doesn’t really matter if an obscure cult leader sparked a revolutionary movement or rather it was someone later who appealed back to a mythical figure they either invented or had heard rumors of. Since I reject the supernatural aspect entirely, the reality of Christianity just makes it an interesting but probably unanswerable intellectual exercise to tease out the origin of the original cult.
It is currently the consensus, but there’s debate, I admit.
if they executed him, yes. Romans were meticulous on that stuff.
I pick Ramses II and King Tut. We have oodles of physical and documentary evidence of the existence of the ancient Egyptians, from 1000-2000 years before Christ, including some of their bodies. Although I know lack of evidence doesn’t prove that Christ didn’t exist, I do wonder why his zealous followers never preserved any physical mementos. The relic of the tooth of the Buddha was around hundreds of years before Christ.
Not sure where you are getting that. The Christian concept of faith in Jesus requires only a belief in what the New Testament says. That’s why it’s called a “faith.” Some Christians have felt like they have to gin up some kind of argument to prove it in arguments, but that’s not the foundation of the religion. At least, not my understanding of it as I grew up attending a Lutheran church.
1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef. Not true, there is Josephus.
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts. Early details yes, but not details of his preaching life.
3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts. John is apparently a first hand account.
4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other. Matthew, Luke and Mark are not called the synoptic gospels for nothing. They generally dont contradict each other, except for the nativity stories. The differ and 'contradict" each other about as much as three different biographies of George Washington would.
5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons I have no idea of what he is talking about here.
The circumstances of Jesus’ birth are discussed only on two Gospels. And yes, they disagree, but that info is from well before any of the Apostles met Jesus.Matthew, Luke and Mark are not called the synoptic gospels for nothing. They generally dont contradict each other, except for the nativity stories. The differ and 'contradict" each other about as much as three different biographies of George Washington would.
The General Consensus among scholars is that John had something to do with his Gospel. He is thought to have dictated most of us to his followers who then edited it.
Matthew likely wasnt “written” by Mathew but Matthew was known to have collected many of the sayings of Jesus. He could be Q or mark. Or both cribbed from Q. Luke doesnt claim to be a first hand witness, but Luke likely wrote that Gospel.
Here is a great cite giving both the pro and con of each possible author:
https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/who-wrote-gospels
So, did Matthew the tax collector write the Gospel of Matthew?
Unfortunately, there isn’t enough evidence to prove or disprove Matthew’s authorship. The church has always attributed this gospel to him, but without a direct claim in the text, that attribution comes from tradition, not Scripture. This isn’t to say tradition is wrong by any means, we just don’t know for sure either way…Either way, the early church appears to have unanimously believed John Mark was the writer of the Gospel of Mark, and no alternatives were ever proposed. He wasn’t an apostle, and he wasn’t an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus, but we have good reason to believe John Mark was in fact the author of the gospel that bears his name…So, did Paul’s companion Luke write the Gospel of Luke?
The overwhelming majority of Bible scholars say “yes.” Between the undisputed claims of early Christians and the textual evidence pointing to someone like Luke, there’s little reason to believe this gospel was written by anyone else…So, did the apostle John write the book of John?
Despite alternative theories about the disciple whom Jesus loved, most evidence still points to the apostle John. The early church father Irenaeus wrote, “afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.” Irenaeus lived in the second century, and claimed to receive this information from John’s disciple, Polycarp…Conclusion
At the end of the day, the gospels are still anonymous. Not one of them identifies its author. We have good reason to support the authors church tradition has named, but we don’t have to simply take their word for it. However, even after examining textual evidence and clues from other writings, none of the evidence for or against these authors is 100% conclusive.
So, the debate rages on. But there* is* a debate. It’s not settled. Good evidence for John & Luke, we have no idea of who JohnMark was (very likely not the Apostle), and Matthew is quite problematic. But by no means is this settled.
No, but Hubbard was real.
Old Julius is one of the few we have fairly solid evidence of. But many we dont. Socrates for example. Most of what we know about him comes from his students, and one- Plato is well known for making shit up to prove a point.
But yeah.
I meant as people calling themselves Christian actually act, not any fundamental of the religion.