# Lack of evidence Jesus existed. Do we typically have evidence of historical figures from that time? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 31, 2016, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155 "2016-05-31T07:49:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/81 "2016-06-01T11:56:08Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I’m not talking about coins _featuring_ him, I’m talking about the ones naming him as the issuing authority.Cite? For “most of them”, not that some were produced after, I knew that already. That doesn’t refute that the attest to Alexander, though. No, although Alexander (as I state in above)\* is \*attested in a surviving contemporary document, the amount of coins bearing his name or even naming him as the issuing authority are usually ones which were _struck_ after he died. AFAIK there are very few which are likely to have been struck in his lifetime. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/82 "2016-06-01T12:30:17Z")
Is it relevant to consider the motivation of the people recounting details of Jesus’s (purported) life and actions, when assessing the “evidence”? Someone upthread mentioned John Smith and the Angel Moroni. A good many people think it clear that Smith was a huckster, and that his stories utter bullshit. Same w/ L. Ron Hubbard. Isn’t it at least POSSIBLE that whomever promulgated the Jesus story 2000 years ago had similar motivations, and was capable of creating and spreading blatant falsehoods? Many cults are advanced for reasons other than an accurate relation of actual events. But Christianity was an exception? Sure, there is no clear evidence of any such conspiracy. But it IS consistent with what we know of human nature, and consistent with the closest historical comparatives. If I were going to try to convince people of an unbelievable story, wouldn’t it behoove me to create a lot of specific details? If I’m just telling a myth or a story, I don’t need to tell you where Ali Baba was born, or what his parents’ names were… Wouldn’t it pay off to have similar yet distinct versions of the story come from disparate sources? I expressed my views upthread. But the folk who advocate for the history of Jesus the man - not to mention Jesus the God, seem to depend on the veracity of the people who expressed their opinions back then. Were folk back then unaware of “spin”? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/83 "2016-06-01T12:56:38Z")
Even if the stories were spread by a huckster, it’s still a lot easier for a huckster to start with a real person and create stories about him, than to create the person and the stories alike. It’s not like the storyteller is saying “This dude appears to me in my room in the evenings sometimes and tells me his teachings”: The Jesus character is purported to have spoken to large crowds on multiple occasions. The only way to make that stick would be to have someone actually speaking to those crowds, and if there was a man doing that, then we can call that man Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/84 "2016-06-01T12:57:20Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > I expressed my views upthread. But the folk who advocate for the history of Jesus the man - not to mention Jesus the God, seem to depend on the veracity of the people who expressed their opinions back then. Were folk back then unaware of “spin”? 😉 There has been a lot of recent research and scholarship supporting the mythicist position. The other side simply cites the “consensus” (i.e. we’ve known for hundreds of years since the priests and monks told us, so we don’t need to analyze that evidence anymore). ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/85 "2016-06-01T13:18:58Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > No, although Alexander (as I state in above)\* is \*attested in a surviving contemporary document, the amount of coins bearing his name or even naming him as the issuing authority are usually ones which were _struck_ after he died. > > AFAIK there are very few which are likely to have been struck in his lifetime. And I’ll ask you exactly what I asked **UDS**. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/86 "2016-06-01T15:05:50Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Which is not consistent with the idea that Paul simply invented Jesus in his letters, which is the position I was challenging. I never said Paul invented Jesus. I was challenging your asserting that it’s clear from the tone of Paul’s letters that his intended audience believed that Jesus was a real person. I think there’s more than one possible conclusion that you can draw from the facts that #1 Paul almost never quotes Jesus’ teachings, #2 Paul says absolutely nothing about Jesus being born, living, walking, breathing, teaching, until his third letter, when suddenly he feels compelled to say that Jesus was “born of a woman” and “had human ancestry”, #3 Paul repeatedly tirades against other preachers who are preaching the wrong gospel but he doesn’t say who these preachers are or what their wrong gospel is. You said you thought the conclusion from these facts is clear. I say it’s not clear. There’s more than one explanation. One of the many explanations is the idea that those other preachers where Gnostics who said Jesus was an angel rather than a human being and Paul was disagreeing with them, insisting that Jesus was a real human. > [@UDS](#): > > Is it possible that the communities regarded Jesus as a purely supernatural figure, an angel, and Paul invented the notion that he was human? Well, it’s not _im_possible, but it doesn’t seem very plausible, for a number of reasons: > > (a) However badly we may think the historical Jesus is evidence, the angelic Jesus is not evidence at all. (NB: I’m not saying that there is no evidence that Jesus was an angel; I’m saying that there is no evidence that the first Jesus-followers believed him to be an angel.) We cannot, if we wish to avoid derision, simultaneously object to the historic Jesus on the grounds of paucity of evidence, and advance the angelic Jesus instead. Richard Carrier would disagree with you on there being no evidence for belief in an angelic Jesus. Anyway, I think there is such evidence, in the bible itself. My evidence is the fact that early texts say nothing at all about Jesus being a real human but later texts start talking about it, and the latest texts of all are the ones who argue strenuously that Jesus was a real human. This gradual change in tone suggests to me that an argument was going on. I think it’s a suspicious claim to say that there was no argument. The fact that only one side of the argument has survived to this day doesn’t prove that the other side never happened. > [@UDS](#): > > (b) You concede that the first Jesus-followers considered him to be the Messiah. We know that in Jewish tradition the Messiah was expected to be an entirely human figure, not an angel. Hence if they regarded him as the Messiah, but an angel, that would be pretty startling. We’d have to explain why we think they believed that, and how they came up with such a view. And we’d have to explain why nobody commented, either favourably or unfavourably, on such a heterodox position. No, I conceded that Paul’s intended audience believed him to be the Messiah. That’s not the same thing as saying that all the Jesus-followers in the first century believed Jesus to be the Messiah, or that they all had the same idea as to what it means to be the Messiah. I admitted that there existed communities who believed what Paul was preaching, not that such communities constituted all of the Jesus-followers or even a majority of them. > [@UDS](#): > > (c) If Paul is trying to sell the humanity of Jesus to a community that regards him as divine, he goes about it in a very odd way - his own encounter with Jesus, which he refers to repeatedly, is entirely mystical. Wouldn’t he be laying more stress on events showing Jesus to be distinctively human? But, as already noted, he says practically nothing about this, and the few references he does make do not appear to be persuasive or polemical in tone. They make much more sense if we assume that (a) the humanity of Jesus was already common ground between Paul and his readers, and (b) readers already had all the biographical information they wanted, or had better sources for biographical information than Paul (who, as already noted, would have been a poor source for biographical information). That’s a plausible interpretation of Paul’s writings. But I don’t agree that it’s the ONLY plausible interpretation. Besides, I’m not just talking about Paul. This shift in tone occurs across the arc of the entire New Testament, when it’s read in the order it was written. By the time you get to the gospel of John, Jesus has been dead for nearly 100 years and the tone has shifted dramatically. > [@UDS](#): > > But if we found that large numbers of people did in fact accept your claims that Joe Schmoe was a historical character, and others opposed the whole Joe Schmoe movement and all its works and pomps, wouldn’t we be a bit surprised if _nobody_ attempted a takedown of your claims? If you named lots of people who you said had known Joe personally, and they never contradicted you? How would you **know** that nobody attempted a takedown of my claims for Joe Schmoe? If, a thousand years from now, a historian found a copy of my fictitious biography of Joe Schmoe in a library, how could that historian prove that nobody contested my version of events? There could be hundreds, even thousands of people alive when I wrote my book, who sneered at it, scoffed at it, even wrote letters to the editor complaining about me being a fraud, but would that sneering, scoffing, and complaining survive a thousand years? If I got five million copies of my book printed, there’s a good chance that at least one of those copies would survive a thousand years. But there could be hundreds of high school students writing scathing term papers proving that my book was complete horse hockey and not a single copy of those term papers survive a thousand years. Our future historian might conclude that my claims about Joe Schmoe went uncontested by my contemporaries, but he/she would be wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/87 "2016-06-01T15:28:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The Jesus character is purported to have spoken to large crowds on multiple occasions. The only way to make that stick would be to have someone actually speaking to those crowds, and if there was a man doing that, then we can call that man Jesus. Yeah, cause after the fact no one would believe crazy things - even if demonstrably untrue - such as hordes of Muslims celebrating on rooftops… Seems to me that people have a strong tendency to believe what they want to believe - facts be damned. Balls and cups sleight of hand appears to be documented in ancient Egyptian wall paintings. I see no reason to believe determined folk were incapable of manipulating/deceiving individuals/groups in ancient times. Could imagine making an argument that given the culture/technology/education of the times, such deception might even be easier than today. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2016, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/88 "2016-06-01T21:37:11Z")
If Jesus was entirely invented and it was all a con-trick, cui bono? Far easier to to gull the rubes with three-card monty. It’s not like the early followers of Jesus were getting rich. In the case of Joseph Smith (if you are not a Mormon believer) it’s pretty clear what the self-interested motive may have been. > [@sbunny8](#): > > … Anyway, I think there is such evidence, in the bible itself. My evidence is the fact that early texts say nothing at all about Jesus being a real human but later texts start talking about it, and the latest texts of all are the ones who argue strenuously that Jesus was a real human. This gradual change in tone suggests to me that an argument was going on. … I agree that it does suggest there was an argument, but it’s still more consistent with Jesus having been a real human. If Ed down the street starts up a ministry, you know he’s real, cuts his grass on the weekend just like everyone else. Maybe you convert, and start preaching Ed’s great ideas. He’s not a miracle worker (let us say), but as his ideas start to spread, they convert people who don’t know him or anyone who directly knows Ed. As time passes, miraculous events start to be attributed to Ed, and if Ed can perform miracles, why–maybe he’s a supernatural being and not a human at all! So as the legend grows over time, there’s an increasing need by Ed’s disciples, and those who learned from Ed’s disciples, to assert his actual humanity, and that’s why the controversy grows greater in the later writers. Of course, the performance of the miracles isn’t at issue, just the nature of Jesus’ being. I think I remember enough of my religious education to speculate that contesting the miracles wasn’t theologically important, but the questions of the Trinity, Jesus’ corporeality, etc. were the subjects of major doctrinal disputes for centuries. All real events become mythologized–some rather quickly, as in the case of 9/11. But just because people believe crazy, untrue things about 9/11 does not mean we’re in any doubt that 9/11 happened–nor are the crazies. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/89 "2016-06-02T01:08:49Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > Richard Carrier would disagree with you on there being no evidence for belief in an angelic Jesus. Anyway, I think there is such evidence, in the bible itself. My evidence is the fact that early texts say nothing at all about Jesus being a real human but later texts start talking about it, and the latest texts of all are the ones who argue strenuously that Jesus was a real human. This gradual change in tone suggests to me that an argument was going on. I think it’s a suspicious claim to say that there was no argument. The fact that only one side of the argument has survived to this day doesn’t prove that the other side never happened. I have to say that I disagree. It may be that the earliest texts say nothing at all about Jesus being human, but they also say nothing at all about Jesus being an angel, which doesn’t really count as “evidence for belief in an angelic Jesus”. And when Paul does start to mention details that point to Jesus humanity, it really doesn’t read to me as though he is doing so polemically, to counter an opposing view. Rather, he seems to me to be mentioning facts which he knows his readers already accept, in order to use those facts to underpin an argument that he is making. We don’t get substantial biographical information about Jesus until the gospels are written, and the usual explanation for this is that it was only when the first generation of Christians were dying off that it became necessary to capture in written form the community’s knowledge/memories of Jesus. That strikes me as a more likely explanation than the speculation that the biographies were composed to counter an angelic-Jesus belief that the biographies themselves do not mention and of which no evidence survives. You can _hypothesise_ an angelic-Jesus belief. But I don’t think it’s consistent for anyone to dismiss historical-Jesus for paucity of evidence, and simultaneously accept angelic-Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/90 "2016-06-02T01:14:47Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > How would you **know** that nobody attempted a takedown of my claims for Joe Schmoe? If, a thousand years from now, a historian found a copy of my fictitious biography of Joe Schmoe in a library, how could that historian prove that nobody contested my version of events? There could be hundreds, even thousands of people alive when I wrote my book, who sneered at it, scoffed at it, even wrote letters to the editor complaining about me being a fraud, but would that sneering, scoffing, and complaining survive a thousand years? If I got five million copies of my book printed, there’s a good chance that at least one of those copies would survive a thousand years. But there could be hundreds of high school students writing scathing term papers proving that my book was complete horse hockey and not a single copy of those term papers survive a thousand years. Our future historian might conclude that my claims about Joe Schmoe went uncontested by my contemporaries, but he/she would be wrong. But we have several sources for historic-Jesus, not just one. And I’m only counting the sources that we _have_; we have lots of later writers, talking about texts that they had access to but we don’t, so there were many sources talking about Jesus (though we don’t know what some of them said). And there’s no hint anywhere that there was ever a source either asserting an angelic-Jesus, or noting such a belief and attempting a takedown. I’d call that fairly striking. If, after you published your Joe Schmoe work, there historical evidence that within a generation there was a substantial community that believed Joe to be real and that followed him or his teachings in one way or another,and another substantial community that opposed this or was critical of it or merely thought it was interesting and worthy of comment, and in all the writings on the subject there is nothing to oppose the reality of Joe Schmoe and no hint that any such writings had ever existed or that such a view had ever been expressed - yes, I’d be tempted to draw a certain conclusion from that. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/91 "2016-06-02T03:26:09Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > No. If the accounts match, then you begin to suspect that one is based on the other. We don’t regard Matthew and Luke as independent sources, for example, because they contain significant amounts of material drawn from Mark, which they are clearly using as a source. > > Paul is our first source, since he is writing before any of the others. (Though in terms of biographical information about Jesus or the events of his life, Paul gives us very little.) > > Mark is our second. He’s writing after Paul, but doesn’t appear to draw at all on Paul’s texts (and the parsimonious explanation for this is that he doesn’t know of them). He’s drawing on some other source (he must be, since he doesn’t claim to be an eye-witness) but that other source doesn’t seem to be Paul, and may not be a written source. (He may simply be interviewing people who knew Jesus, many of whom would still have been alive when Mark was writing.) Hence, he is a source independent of Paul. > > Then we have Matthew and Luke. Neither of them claim to be eye-witnesses; Luke says explicitly that he’s not. They draw on Mark, so we don’t count them as independent sources. We can regard them as “telephone” from Mark if we wish. They don’t draw on Paul. They draw on another, now lost, source which we call ‘Q’. (Q accounts for the material which is common to Matthew and Luke but which they didn’t get from Mark.) Q is an independent source, since he has material not drawn from either Mark or Paul. > > Finally we have John. He’s writing later than any of the others, but he doesn’t appear to draw on any of them and may not have known about them. The text does not claim to have been written by an eye-witness. Religious tradition says that he was an eye-witness - the apostle John - but the weight of scholarly opinion rejects this. Most likely the text is based on an oral tradition, which may originate with the apostle John. On this view, the text is produced by the community of John’s followers, either late in John’s life or after his death. > > So, in summary, Paul, Mark, Q and John are four independent sources - independent of one another, that is - of which we know, and three of them have survived. None of them are first-hand sources. > > “Telephone” explains accounts which partly match, or where one is an extended or embroidered version of the other. (I’m looking at you, Matthew.) But where one account doesn’t seem to draw at all from the other, you’re probably not looking at “telephone”. **UDS** I’d partly agree with that, but not about the Fourth Gospel. John/the Beloved Disciple explicitly claims to be an eyewitness, although he doesn’t name himself: e.g. the text says in the Passion narrative, “He that saw these things has borne witness, and we certify that his testimony is true”, and at at least one other point (after the resurrection). I’m aware the ‘weight of scholarly opinion’ does not consider it the work of an eyewitness, but I’m disinclined to defer to scholarly authority on a matter as subjective and slippery as this (higher criticism is, to put it very mildly, not an exact science). If you think the weight of evidence suggests John was written late and not by an eyewitness, I’d love to hear the argument in your own words. (Personally I’m convinced by the arguments of J.A.T. Robinson and others that “John” was written pre-70 AD, and probably by an eyewitness). Matthew is traditionally ascribed to an eyewitness as well, but I don’t have strong opinions about the authorship there (though I again agree with Robinson that they are all most plausibly dated pre-70, especially Luke). In any case, I do agree that multiple independent sources exist. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/92 "2016-06-02T03:37:28Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > I think a point worth making explicitly is that the evidence we require to establish something does depend on what that something is. > > The claim that Jesus rose from the dead, for example, is a startling one, and I can’t begin to think what kind of evidence we might require in order to it that as an established historical fact. Certainly, the evidence we have comes nowhere near to anything sufficient to establish the resurrection as a historical event. > > On the other hand, the claims that Jesus was born, that he was an itinerant preacher, and that he was executed are much less startling, and therefore we might reasonable accept evidence that wouldn’t establish the resurrection as a historical fact as sufficient to establish these biographical details. And, I still maintain, by the standard generally applied by the academy to establish events from this period of history, these biographical details are pretty well established. It’s very much the majority view of historians of the period that Jesus was born, that he was an itinerant preacher and that he was executed. > > But the same historians who accept this would _not_ accept the resurrection as a historically-established fact, or the miracles attributed to Jesus, or indeed some of the biographical information which appears in only one of the sources, or the attribution of certain teachings to Jesus. In some cases these events are so extraordinary that they would require extraordinary evidence; in others the events are not inherently extraordinary, but they’re just not sufficiently well-attested in the sources. (Did Jesus actually say “I am the way, the truth and the light”? We only have one source that says he did. Did Jesus actually have a brother called James? We have two independent sources that say so (Paul, Mark) plus a source in which James appears as a significant character in his own right (Acts) plus a source which says that Jesus has a brother, but doesn’t name him (Jude). So, yeah, this is looking a bit more solid.) It’s worth pointing out that the claim “Jesus had a biological brother” is one that most Christians today (Catholics, Orthodox, and some Anglicans) would flatly reject. They generally, following the Fifth Ecumenical Council, read the term ‘brother’ in the texts as either meaning half-brother or cousin. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/93 "2016-06-02T04:00:54Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Is it relevant to consider the motivation of the people recounting details of Jesus’s (purported) life and actions, when assessing the “evidence”? Yes, absolutely. It’s a standard aspect of historical evaluation. Sage Rat has already pointed to this when he talks about the embarrrassment criterion; if somebody says something that will create problems for himself or is otherwise contrary to his interests, all other things being equal that has a higher degree of reliability than when the same person says something that is advantageous or convenient to himself. > [@Dinsdale](#): > > expressed my views upthread. But the folk who advocate for the history of Jesus the man - not to mention Jesus the God, seem to depend on the veracity of the people who expressed their opinions back then. Were folk back then unaware of “spin”? 😉 Of course they were aware of spin. Why would you imagine otherwise? If anything, it seems to be the mythical-Jesus crowd who are in denial about this. They speculate that Paul (or someone else) invented Jesus, but they don’t really address the obvious question; why did anybody else take the invention seriously? If only for that reason, I think there’s broad acceptance in this thread that Paul _didn’t_ simply invent Jesus in his letters; his letters are addressed to communities in a variety of places who were already followers of Jesus. Which means that, within 20 years or so of the death (or supposed death) of Jesus, there was a Jesus movement which was already quite widespread. And while we can conjecture that Jesus was a fiction created orally by somebody else, or created by someone else in documents that have now been lost and every document which ever referred to those documents has now been lost, we have no evidence at all to support this conjecture and no reason to make it. And we’d still have to explain why the invention found any traction with people. The hypothesis can also be tested against your own question; what motivation would anybody have to invent Jesus? As a method of starting a new religious movement, it doesn’t look very promising. There were lots of new religious movements at the time, but very few of them were based on an invented and easily refuted fictional character. Inventing a new revelation or prophecy, or offering a competing interpretation of existing religious traditions, would have been a much more promising route. (This, in fact, is what both Jesus and John the Baptist are presented as doing in the Christian texts. So if they saw that as the way to start a religious movement and they wanted to start a religious movement, why didn’t they do it that way?) Plus, if the Jesus movement was based on an invention, the inventors don’t seem to have done very well out of it. The likely inventors seem to have been persecuted and, in most cases, killed, and this wasn’t an altogether surprising outcome, given the challenges they made to powerful established interests. So, what was their motivation in inventing Jesus? Unless we postulate a masochistic desire to have the living sh!t kicked out of them, it’s not easily explained. In the ancient world if you wanted to do well out of religion the obvious course was to stick with the establishment. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/94 "2016-06-02T04:03:09Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > It’s worth pointing out that the claim “Jesus had a biological brother” is one that most Christians today (Catholics, Orthodox, and some Anglicans) would flatly reject. They generally, following the Fifth Ecumenical Council, read the term ‘brother’ in the texts as either meaning half-brother or cousin. Yes, and you could possibly make the case that, on the criterion of embarrassment, “James the Brother of the Lord” is likely to be true. But not really. For _later_ generations of Christians, James being the brother of the Lord presents a theological problem, but we have no reason to think it would have been a problem at the time the texts were composed. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/95 "2016-06-02T04:12:45Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > **UDS** I’d partly agree with that, but not about the Fourth Gospel. John/the Beloved Disciple explicitly claims to be an eyewitness, although he doesn’t name himself: e.g. the text says in the Passion narrative, “He that saw these things has borne witness, and we certify that his testimony is true”, and at at least one other point (after the resurrection). > > I’m aware the ‘weight of scholarly opinion’ does not consider it the work of an eyewitness, but I’m disinclined to defer to scholarly authority on a matter as subjective and slippery as this (higher criticism is, to put it very mildly, not an exact science). If you think the weight of evidence suggests John was written late and not by an eyewitness, I’d love to hear the argument in your own words. (Personally I’m convinced by the arguments of J.A.T. Robinson and others that “John” was written pre-70 AD, and probably by an eyewitness). I’m going well beyond any expertise that I have (which is none, basically). But with a statement like “he says these things . . . and we certify that his testimony is true” I’d understand: - “we” refers to the writers of the text; and - “he” refers to their (oral) source. In other words, we spoke to John; he told us that he had seen these things; we know that he is a truthful and reliable witness; we are writing these things down. Which would make John’s gospel a secondary source; the author isn’t telling us what the author saw, but what someone else told the author that that someone had seen. This is consistent with the idea that there is a community of Jesus-followers gathered around, and led by, John. And, as John is getting older the community decides to write down systematically what John knows about Jesus, so that the memories can be captured and recorded for the long-term benefit of the community. That’s how I see it, anyway. But I could be wrong. > [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Matthew is traditionally ascribed to an eyewitness as well, but I don’t have strong opinions about the authorship there (though I again agree with Robinson that they are all most plausibly dated pre-70, especially Luke). In any case, I do agree that multiple independent sources exist. The problem with Matthew is that he quotes large chunks of Mark verbatim. Neither scholarship nor religious tradition assert that Mark was an eyewitness. If Matthew was an eyewitness, why would he treat Mark as a primary source? ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/96 "2016-06-02T04:53:06Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > I’m going well beyond any expertise that I have (which is none, basically). But with a statement like “he says these things . . . and we certify that his testimony is true” I’d understand: > > - “we” refers to the writers of the text; and > > - “he” refers to their (oral) source. > > In other words, we spoke to John; he told us that he had seen these things; we know that he is a truthful and reliable witness; we are writing these things down. Which would make John’s gospel a secondary source; the author isn’t telling us what the author saw, but what someone else told the author that that someone had seen. > > This is consistent with the idea that there is a community of Jesus-followers gathered around, and led by, John. And, as John is getting older the community decides to write down systematically what John knows about Jesus, so that the memories can be captured and recorded for the long-term benefit of the community. > > That’s how I see it, anyway. But I could be wrong. > > The problem with Matthew is that he quotes large chunks of Mark verbatim. Neither scholarship nor religious tradition assert that Mark was an eyewitness. If Matthew was an eyewitness, why would he treat Mark as a primary source? Re: your first point, I’d generally agree with that, but you can put two interpretations on “John saw these things, and we certify that his testimony is true”, depending on how much redaction you think happened between the witness and the final writing of the text. It’s possible that the transmission from John to the writers happened with a _minimal_ level of editing, which is what I think happened: the role of the eventual writers/editors in Ephesus or wherever John lived, was simply to chronicle his dictation and add two marginal notes saying “we testify that this is true”. To me, this is more or less equivalent to John writing the Gospel. Or you could assume a long process of redaction took place between John’s oral tradition and the writers, in which case it’s fair to say John didn’t write it. In any case, the two marginal notes where some unnamed editors refer to themselves as ‘we’ aren’t incompatible with John being the primary author of the text. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/97 "2016-06-02T05:13:52Z")
> [@SmartAlecCat](#): > > There has been a lot of recent research and scholarship supporting the mythicist position. How much is “a lot”? Of all the scholarly articles and books written in the past generation about Jesus and the New Testament, what percentage support the mythicist position? > [@](#): > > The other side simply cites the “consensus” This is not true, as can be plainly seen from reading this thread. **UDS** and others have built their case without relying on consensus. But beyond the SDMB there are plenty of excellent books by “the other side” that make scholarly arguments about the life of Jesus. Try reading _Lord or Legend: Wrestling with the Jesus Dilemma_ by Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy, in addition to the books already mentioned by **md2000**. To claim that these authors only cite consensus is flatly false. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/98 "2016-06-02T05:15:00Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Re: your first point, I’d generally agree with that, but you can put two interpretations on “John saw these things, and we certify that his testimony is true”, depending on how much redaction you think happened between the witness and the final writing of the text. It’s possible that the transmission from John to the writers happened with a _minimal_ level of editing, which is what I think happened: the role of the eventual writers/editors in Ephesus or wherever John lived, was simply to chronicle his dictation and add two marginal notes saying “we testify that this is true”. To me, this is more or less equivalent to John writing the Gospel. Or you could assume a long process of redaction took place between John’s oral tradition and the writers, in which case it’s fair to say John didn’t write it. In any case, the two marginal notes where some unnamed editors refer to themselves as ‘we’ aren’t incompatible with John being the primary author of the text. For no particular reason, I see something in between the two. The authors are followers of John and members of his community; they are already familiar with the accounts of Jesus that he has given many times, possibly in a variety of forms. They compose a text which draws these accounts into a coherent whole, possibly asking questions as they go to flesh out detail or whatever. Then they discuss the text with John (unless, perchance, he dies before they get to do this.) ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/99 "2016-06-02T05:27:21Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Is it relevant to consider the motivation of the people recounting details of Jesus’s (purported) life and actions, when assessing the “evidence”? > > Someone upthread mentioned John Smith and the Angel Moroni. A good many people think it clear that Smith was a huckster, and that his stories utter bullshit. Same w/ L. Ron Hubbard. Isn’t it at least POSSIBLE that whomever promulgated the Jesus story 2000 years ago had similar motivations, and was capable of creating and spreading blatant falsehoods? Many cults are advanced for reasons other than an accurate relation of actual events. But Christianity was an exception? Read the Gospel of Mark, which, virtually everyone agrees, was the first gospel written. Nowhere is the Gospel of Mark does Jesus say that his followers are obligated to give money to church authorities. In fact, Mark doesn’t even mention a Christian church. The entire thrust of Mark’s Gospel is that Jewish believers are free from being controlled by religious authority figures. If Mark were a huckster, as you seem to imply, then in what way would Mark’s Gospel serve the scam that Mark was running? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155/100 "2016-06-02T05:40:16Z")
> [@sbunny8](#): > > I never said Paul invented Jesus. I was challenging your asserting that it’s clear from the tone of Paul’s letters that his intended audience believed that Jesus was a real person. I think there’s more than one possible conclusion that you can draw from the facts that #1 Paul almost never quotes Jesus’ teachings, #2 Paul says absolutely nothing about Jesus being born, living, walking, breathing, teaching, until his third letter, when suddenly he feels compelled to say that Jesus was “born of a woman” and “had human ancestry”, #3 Paul repeatedly tirades against other preachers who are preaching the wrong gospel but he doesn’t say who these preachers are or what their wrong gospel is. I would say that from Paul’s letters it is pretty evident what the “wrong gospel” is. Paul’s rivals insisted that all believers were required to submit to circumcision, kosher diet, and all other Jewish religious law. Paul disagreed, of course, always arguing strenuously against justification through the law. That was what the debate was about, and when Paul ranted against a position, that was the position he ranted against. But there is simply no passage in any of Paul’s letters that makes sense as a part of a Jesus: Angel or Human debate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-evidence-jesus-existed-do-we-typically-have-evidence-of-historical-figures-from-that-time/756155.md?page=6)