Did Jesus even exist? I know that Cecil Adams has an article saying that he did . . . Cecil’s contention was that the story of Jesus could not have spread as quickly as it did if the man did not exist. Cecil did not comment on whether or not Jesus was the son of god, just whether or not the man existed.
There’s much literature that says otherwise . . . let me know what you think of this article:
Well, I think SOMEONE existed. As Cecil pointed out, 70 years is a bit soon for them to make up the whole story. However, like a lot of semi-mythical characters, a lot of things get attributed to the person, especially after their deaths. I think that the Jesus story is much like the King Arthur story…some kernel of truth wrapped around a lot of legend and myth and story, some of it done by other people, some of it just pure myth, some of it crafted specifically (in Jesus’ case) by the early church for specific reasons.
-XT
While I tend to agree with most of that article, it appears as though they’re stating that Jesus, the man, didn’t exist. It’s my opinion that, while even circumstantial proof is very slim, it’s entirely possible that some guy named Jesus wandered about spouting off about being the Messiah, and was subsequently crucified for it.
Cricifixion, as we’ve been told recently, was hardly anything new or unusual for the Romans, and further, due to the turmoil of the era, the calls and cries for various saviors, messiahs or other divine interventions was similarly commonplace.
However, the page is also correct in noting that “Jesus” was hardly an uncommon name, and the description “Jesus of Nazareth” isn’t much different than saying “Samuel of Topeka, Kansas” today.
Basically, some guy got nailed for saying he was a messiah, based on preexisting religion and mythology, his followers took up the cause, weaving in more preexisiting mythology and attributing wonderful works to the figurehead, and another religion was born.
In short, yes, of course it’s very little but superstition and mythology. The man may well have existed- maybe, we simply don’t know- but we do know for a reasonably assured fact that the one work that refers to the man is itself significantly erroneous, often contradictory, consists largely of oral tradition, takes much of its foundations from a wide variety of earlier works, contains “eyewitness reports” written decades after the fact, and has very, very little corraboration outside of itself.
Assuming one believes that the person existed, his followers at the time believed that the “end of days” was rapidly approaching. There was no reason for them to write down the story even if that had been common. The very earliest generally accepted writings were from 70+ years afterward. Imagine if no one had written down anything about Abraham Lincoln until around, oh 1950 or so. No newspapers, no paintings, no photos, no bios. Just oral tradition. How factually accurate would it have been? “Well, I knew this guy, and he knew one of the disciples, and he says that Jesus said…” Remember the childhood game of “telephone?”
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbible4.html
The interesting thing to me is that it seems three of the Gospels were written at least 30 years after Jesus’s death (Dex and Eutychus put Mark at 65 AD, Matthew at around 65 - 70 AD - though some scholar say it’s potentially much later, Luke around 70 AD, and John around 100 AD). So even assuming there was a real guy named Yeshua from Nazareth, it can’t really be said that we know about much of anything he did - much less actual quotes.
Those dates are wrong…or outdated. It’s a pretty old article. Mark is 70 AD, Matthew 80, Luke 90 and John 100.
Paul’s letters predate the Canonical Gospels but paul never met Jesus and says almost nothing about the historical figure, speaking only of a much more abstract “Christ.”
Thanks, Dio. Only further supports my point, I think.
Yes, and even more to the point than the dating is the fact that none of the Gospels are first hand accounts. It’s possible that some of the sayings embedded within them derive from an authentic figure (in fact, I believe they do) but we have no eyewitness accounts of any part of his life.
Paul, writing before 63 AD says he met Peter, John & James {probably in the 40’s-50’s} & mentions the 12 in Jerusalem & that Jesus was crucified. Most of these “JC was a myth” theories hinge on Paul founding Christianity & making crap up — but this article doesn’t go there and actually cites him, Paul, as evidence… which is very problematic for this theory … Paul needs to dealt with (liar, teller of tales) for this theory to work… not be cited as an early authority.
Also, it is not insane to believe that Nero was killing & hassling “Christians” within 30 years of the events … If JC didn’t live I would expect some 1st or 2nd century “he didn’t live” literature … the Romans/Paganworld seem to say “it’s laughable superstitious, gobbledy-gook, bad for civil society and the empire, bad for the army and for order” not “There was no Jesus”
You’re forgetting that the texts criticizing christiannism have dissapeared. Either they were actively destroyed, either they just weren’t copied/kept. The only knowledge we still have concerning the arguments of these people are the “refutatios” written by christians.
Let’s suppose that on this board, for instance in threads about the israel/palestine issue, you could only read the posts made by say, the pro-Israel side. From them, you could deduce at least some of the arguments used by the pro-palestinian side. But you wouldn’t have a complete picture. The answers could not adress properly and completely the points raised by them, or could even completely ignore some of these arguments, precisely because they’re the most difficult to deal with.
That’s the same issue with the “refutatios”. We know what some christians have written to refute the arguments of their oponents (and even that only in limited number and at a rather late period, when christianism was well implanted or even dominant), but we don’t know the arguments of christianism detractors themselves, and especially not for the early period of christianism.
As for the first century litterature stating “he didn’t live”…well…there’s no 1st century litterature about christianism at all (I mean outside the christian litterature itself) excepted the brief comments of Josephus (assuming they weren’t interpolated, which is extremely likely for one of them, and that he refers to the christian Jesus, which isn’t obvious for the second one. As already mentionned, this name was far from uncommon at this time and place). Non christian writers from the first century were unconcerned with this “jesus” thing, or weren’t even aware of it, or their writings didn’t survive.
As for the second century, christians began to be mentionned a handful of times in latin literature around 120 AD, but the two only references are a footnote explaining that christians are called this way because they follow the teaching of a “christ” who had been executed under Pilatus (but it’s way more likely that the writer just reported what christian had said rather than went to Jerusalem to actually check the archives) and a mention stating that Jews in Rome were rioting at the instigation of a guy named Chrestus (this author apparently didn’t get the christian story). The other writings from this periods just mention the christians (how to handle them, for instance, if they refuse to sacrifice to the gods) but don’t say a word about Jesus or more generally christian’s beliefs.
To the extent that some (not many) scholars, adding this to the existing beliefs of other sects existing at this time (there were plenty of messianic sects around at these times) think that Paul actually believed in an “angelos-christos” in other words a spiritual messiah, not in an actual man.
Some others even believe that there has been no Paul at all, or at least that he didn’t write anything, and that the letters considered to be Paul’s (as oposed to te letters which are generally considered as only *attributed to him) were fakes written by someone else wanting to make a point against rival christian groups (there was much dissent amongst christians in early times) and attributing his writing to a “Paul” who could have been a real character remembered at this time or to an imaginary one). The thesis I read supporting this point of view accused Marcion (an antisemite christian later considered as heretical when the church get its ideas together) of this sleight of hand.
Finally, I unfortunately can’t remember the name of this christian sect which survived for some centuries and violently rejected the teachings of Paul, accusing him of having betrayed the message of Jesus and followed the true teachings of Peter (whatever these teachings could have been). It’s worth mentionning that it seems they followed the Jewish law, hence apparently did not believe that Jesus had abolished anything contained in it. For all we know, they could have been right and the only “true” christians. That’s assuming there was really a Jesus who was somehow similar to character christian people believe in.
By the way, this sect’s beliefs have been used by muslim theologians as an evidence that the christians indeed messed up (like stated in the koran) with the teachings god send to men through his prophet Issa/Jesus.
I’m surprised that article didn’t mention Hercules, who has so many things in common with Jesus that they could have been best pals and had many conversations over coffee and cigars.
Hercules was the son of a god (Jupiter) and a mortal woman (Alcmena), who, after many heroic events, died horribly. “So when the flames had consumed the mother’s share of Hercules, the diviner part, instead of being injured thereby, seemed to start forth with new vigour, to assume a more lofty port and a more awful dignity. Jupiter enveloped him in a cloud, and took him up in a four-horse chariot to dwell among the stars.”
Now, I’m not saying Jesus didn’t exist as a person–just that a lot of the stories of his origin, life and death were pillaged from earlier myths.
In a concurrent GD thread, “Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? Were Gospels omitted from New Testament?” (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=241541&page=2), FriendRob posted the following:
If this is correct (I haven’t checked any of it), then you are probably talking about the Ebionites.
On a related note – believe it or not, there is still a Middle Eastern Gnostic sect known as the Mandeans, Sabaeans, or Johannites, who believe John the Baptist was a true prophet, or even the Messiah (I’m not clear on this point), and reject Jesus as a false teacher. Whether this sect can be lineally traced to John’s original following, I do not know. See http://altreligion.about.com/cs/mandeism/; i-cias.com - Encyclopedia of the Orient http://www.geocities.com/mandaeans/Sabians6.html.
I have always seen a big problem with John 1:8: “He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.” Ditto with Mark 1:7: “And he preached, saying, ‘After me comes he who is mightier than I, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.’” And Matthew 4:14: “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I have need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?’” All of these passages strike me as rather desperate counter-propaganda, directed against Johannites contemporary with the early Christians, who could always get up in their faces and argue: “How could Jesus be the Messiah? How could he be greater than John? Everybody knows he went to John to be baptized.”
I don’t think it can be proven either way. I disagree with this notion that it wasn’t enough time to make up the story. As the article points out, the elements of the story of Jesus already existed long before; the remaining question is whether there was a real person named Jesus. And MLS nailed it - when you don’t write things down, it’s like the game of “telephone”. Without any contemperaneous records, it’s impossible to know whether the identity of the person in question is accurate. I’ll give you a modern example: Remember the story that was going around about the “Newlywed Game”, and a contestant’s embarassing misunderstanding of a question. In the prevailing version of the story that was going around, the contestant was an African-American man who, when asked the most unusual place he and his wife ever made love, replied “That’d be in the butt, Bob.” The story made its way to snopes.com, where it was refuted as being a myth. Even Bob Eubanks, the host of the show, claimed it never happened. That is, until a TAPE of the show in question surfaced. Turns out it did happen, but details as important as the IDENTITY OF THE PERSON HIMSELF had been radically altered. I saw the clip on television, and it was actually a woman of Middle Eastern? descent, and what she said was “In the ass”, not “In the butt, Bob”. Had the tape not existed, we would no doubt still think it was an African-American gentleman. If people can change RACE and GENDER after only 20 years or so, is it really so hard to believe that people could change a name after 70 years?
O.K., I know what you’re gonna say - “But there’s still a real person in the story, even if the identity is hopelessly confused.” But look at some other common urban legends, where there is no real person. Despite the fact that there has never been an old lady who put her poodle in the microwave oven to dry off, many people believed there was. I also seriously doubt a child ever ate Pop Rocks, drank a soda and had his stomach explode. There also do not appear to be any cases of anyone ever igniting gasoline fumes by using their cell phone, yet it’s commonly believed that it happened to a real person. All these things supposedly happened less than 70 years ago, plenty of time to completely make up a story. And we’re in a time of extensive written, audio, and video documentation of events. If it can happen now, imagine how easy it would have been in the first century A.D., when such documentation was relatively rare.
Or better yet, just go to the “glurge” page on snopes.com to see all the dubious religion-related stories, supposedly occurring within the last 50 years, that people believe. When you throw fervent religious belief into the equation, people can be ready to believe practically anything. So is 70 years enough time to invent the story of Jesus out of whole-cloth? IMO, absolutely. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but I don’t see as how it’s impossible.
While I don’t know the name of the sect you are referring to, I would bet that its origin stems from the meeting of Peter and Paul, as originally told in the book of Galatians, the earliest of his letters written (or second earliest, as some scholars think it may be Thessalonians). Interestingly, this letter mentions nothing of the typical features of Jesus: Son of God, virgin birth, healing and other miracles, the meaning of his crucifixion or whether he was even crucified to begin with. You would think these characteristics of God Incarnate would be mentioned at least once.
The tone of the letter is of anger and frustration as he describes Peter’s unwillingness to let Gentiles become Christian unless they submit themselves to Jewish dietary laws and circumcision. Paul wrote the letter upon his return and makes no mention of any reconciliation between the two opposing dogmatic viewpoints. It wasn’t until later, when the book of Acts was written by Luke, that we hear this same meeting ended in success, with all parties agreeing unanimously. It becomes clear, to me at least, that what was described in Acts was a cover up to solidfy Christians under one roof of faith, and that same cover up, followed by threat of Roman prosecution, distorted any seed of historical accuracy beyond recognition (at least as shown in the books of Luke and John, where we here of such things as Immaculate Conception and the demotion of Peter as Jesus’ main disciple over another “whom Jesus loved more”).
Cy
Many scholars accept the “Q” thesis, which would suggest that there was at the very least an early group that recorded the sayings of a Jesus fairly near to when they were active. Many of these sayings could be seen as belonging to a tradition of social criticism and cynicism, but they do seem to come from an actual person, even if they tell us nothing about his story.
There probably was a person Jesus, and he may have even died on the cross. Other than that: I’m not sure we have a hodgepodge of myths, but definately a hodge-podge of different opinions of who Jesus was and what he was all about.
I’ve always thought that the “Elvis is alive” cult is somewhat of a good modern parallel. With Elvis you have living witnesses to his death, a death certificate, an autopsy and a plethora of other evidence, yet somehow the meme manages to survive that Elvis is still alive somewhere. Granted, most people think those believers are crackpots, but most people thought Christians were crackpots too when they were still a burgeoning cult.
More importantly, it was a credulous and superstitious culture. It had no newspapers, no mass media and very few reliable documents to check for the factuality of claims. If a subculture of Elvis believers can arise within ten years in contemperorary times despite a mountain of contradictory evidence, how difficult would it have been for a Jesus myth to grow through oral transmission and embellishment over a period of a half century?
I think Jesus was probably a real person but Christianity is pretty much the culmination of legends, tall tales and religious interpretations of his life and death.
This is an interesting debate, and good points have been made on both sides. IMO, the evidence is scarce enough that coming to either conclusion is possible. I started reading about early Christianity several years ago. As an atheist, I was perhaps hoping to find “proof” that Jesus never existed - wouldn’t that be great when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come around? I have actually come around to the other side, though: Jesus probably existed, and some of the traditions about him are probably true. Yes, there’s been a tremendous accrection of myth to the story, but I think there was something that it accreted around.
The earliest sources for Jesus’s life are: Paul, Q, Thomas, and Mark. (Not necessarily in that order.) The dates are very debatable for all except Paul, who wrote around 50 AD. Paul knew little of Jesus’s life or sayings, but he does seem to have known people who knew Jesus, and he knew some traditions about his sayings. Q may have been composed in several stages (reference: Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q). But Q, Mark, and Thomas contain quite a few sayings that are similar but independant of each other - that is, Q wasn’t influenced by Mark’s gospel or vice versa. These sayings have a character of their own, such that one could imagine them coming from one man. (See The Five Gospels, by The Jesus Seminar.) Thomas is an interesting confirmation of this:
Also, there are other Christian writings of the 1st and 2nd centuries that seem to preserve still other, independent versions of some sayings.
Now, if someone invented Jesus, who was it? What was his theological bent? How did he manage to convince so many people with such varied views of the fact that Jesus existed? Is it more likely that a group of people were convinced of the non-existent Jesus, learned his sayings, and traveled widely teaching them, or that there was a real person whose sayings were remembered and interpreted in different ways? To me, the latter seem far more likely.
clairobscur: There is evidence of anti-Paul christians in the Pseudo-Clementine writings. These are thought to have been written by Jewish Christians, but whether they are the “Ebionites” mentioned by several Church Fathers is unclear AFAIK. J.D. Crossan discusses them briefly in The Beginnings of Christianity* - that’s about all I know about them.
Excellent article.
One of the more interesting theories I’ve read is that Jesus really was the King of the Jews. He was captured when he exchanged himself for his son (Bar Abbas - son of the master) whom the Romans were threatening to kill. The crucifixion was rigged; his death was faked by drugging him and his followers made off with him. He lived, continued to be a pain in the ass to the Romans by rumbling with them, and finally died at the siege of Masada.
It actually makes a lot more sense than the mythology. Donovan Joyce’s book The Jesus Scroll is an excellent read for this theory.
That had never occurred to me, but it is an excellent thought.
What’s more, it provides logical support for the idea that there was an historical Jesus, who was baptized by John the Baptist. If not, why would there be a need to come up with this elaborate counter-propaganda to establish that Jesus was greater than the man who baptized him? Why include John the Baptist in the story at all, if Jesus is an invented figure? Why admit that Jesus went to him to be baptized?
So my take is that Jesus was an actual person, that there were people with living memories of him at the time the Gospels were written. The Gospel writers added elements from myths and legends then in circulation to help deify Jesus.