The “Dude” from The Big Lebowski.
Using a time machine you go back to find the historical Jesus. What do you think you'll really find?
Because a LOT of myths and legends are based on actual people and/or events. There most likely was a King Arthur – not a Camelot, with the Knights of the Round Table, but a leader of a tribe, or clan, of some sort. It was recently discovered that Troy was a real city, and not just a legend.
Hell, even Santa Claus was based on an actual person. So why is it so hard to believe there may have been a philosopher, or preacher, whose teachings grew popular, and eventually people began to attribute divine qualities to said individual.
Why on earth do you think I assume Buddha is any more real than Jesus?
No facts, no substance. As others have pointed out there were plenty of messiahs in the time and later writers could have referenced things they heard about any or all of them or none of them.
A Jewish cult leader. Charismatic. Personality somewhere between Wavy Gravy and Muqtada al-Sadr. Sanity level somewhere between Burl Ives and Idi Amin.
Not the messiah. A very naughty boy. 
But seriously, maybe some kind of David Icke/David Koresh type of figure who got lucky. (Inasmuch as getting strung up on a cross is getting lucky, but at least he was still attracting new people to his cult 2000 years later.) Or perhaps a harmless and fairly insignificant philosopher/hippie type, who became a kind of folk hero after his death for whatever reason (maybe after his story was written down and modified).
Rather like your argument.
Everyone believes Saul/Paul existed, right? Even TriPolar? Why, if Saul/Paul existed, is Jesus-as-actual-guy so hard to swallow?
To me, the best evidence for a historical Jesus is circumstantial. Within 70 years of his claimed life, there were several thousand Christians, thanks to Peter and Paul.
The Book of Acts was written by the same guy who wrote the Gospel According to Luke, and existed by the early 100’s. It opens like a week after Jesus died, with the [del]twelve[/del] eleven apostles deciding who should be the new twelfth, since Judas killed himself. It goes to cover Paul’s travels all around the Roman Empire, including a section where the author accompanied him.
If Jesus weren’t real, he was an intentional and gigantic conspiracy on the part of Paul and his confederates. That seems to me much less likely than a historical Jesus.
Right here in the US of A, which has been around for only a couple hundred years, we have such figures as Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, and Jim Bowie who indisputably existed. They are also legendary in that there are all manner of folk tales told about them that absolutely didn’t happen. Because Davey Crockett never really grinned a bear out of tree, does that mean there wasn’t a historical Davey Crockett?
And it would be a conspiracy designed to fool people who would know the truth. There were still plenty of people alive in Paul’s era who would have been around during Jesus’ lifetime. It’s hard to credit the idea that the early Christians would have gotten away with making up a character like Jesus.
What is your evidence for this?
I think there is an excluded middle here. Acts and Luke have the same author, yes, but that author never had any contact with apostles or with Paul (he was writing around 90-100 CE, long after Paul was dead). The author states himself, in his introduction, that his information is at least third hand.
We also know that Luke (like Matthew) copied much of his material virtually verbatim from Mark, which is dated around 70 CE and which was not written by a witness even in Christian tradition.
I’m not saying Jesus didn’t exist, but no conspiracy would be necessary here. Luke theoretically could have believed every word he wrote even if Jesus was a wholly mythical construct. A lot of the theories in this direction are not that there was an intention by anyone to invent a Jesus for nefarious purposes, but that the Jesus myth evolved from an initial belief in a purely divine or spiritual figure into a belief that he really lived and walked on earth.
I don’t believe that myself, but it does not involve a a conspiracy.
… not sure if serious…
This is a really silly trope. For one thing, Paul was preaching to Gentiles outside of Palestine, so they would have been in no position to know anything one way or the other, but moire significantly, how is anyone supposed to know that somebody did not exist?
Let’s I say I know a guy named Steve who knew a guy in London named Bob, and Steve told me he once saw Bob jump over a house like the Hulk. There were MILLIONS of people living in London at that time. Surely they would know if Bob never existed, right? So I can’t possibly be making the story up. You have to believe me, right? How could I possibly be making that up when there are so many people who know Bob never existed.
Furthermore, there is an assumption inherent in your premise that even if somebody HAD objected, it would have mattered in the least to believers. All you have to do is look around. Does Obama’s birth certificate make any difference to believers? Mountains of evidence for Global Warming and evolution? Video proof of psychics scamming audiences with stage magic? Since when have even concrete facts and evidence ever mattered to true believers, much less somebody telling them something they don’t want to hear.
Seriously, how do you think anybody was either supposed to know or prove there was NOT a Jesus? How can you prove even now that a person you never heard of did not exist?
Completely serious. I’m not asking a question I don’t already know the answer to.
I don’t claim to have evidence that would satisfy another person. This is IMHO, not GD.
I believe I have personal experience of Jesus. I do not expect you to believe this experience is anything other than a delusion. And I certainly agree that skepticism is the appropriate reaction to reports of phenomena with supposedly supernatural explanations.
But the OP asked what we would expect to find if we had the use of a time machine set to take us back to when Jesus lived (if he did), or to the time of whatever persons or events spawned the Jesus legend occurred (if there wasn’t a historical Jesus). I gave my answer. I did not intend to defend it; it’s not the sort of thing that one can logically defend. And, as I pointed out, this is IMHO, not GD.
Well remember, the Christian cult was a danger to the Empire. And altho we no longer have many records from that period, the ancient Romans certainly did. At no time did the Romans attempt to deny that Jesus was a actual real person, crucified, etc. And they certainly could have said “We have checked Pontius Pilate’s reports, and there’s no record of any such rabble-rouser existing, he is entirely made up.” In fact the whole idea of Jesus not being real didn’t come about until relatively recently, as these things go.
But to settle the issue- Cecil sez so:
Still, barring an actual conspiracy, 40 years is too short a time for an entirely mythical Christ to have been fabricated out of (heh-heh) whole cloth. (See below.) Certainly the non-Christians who wrote about him in the years following his putative death did not doubt he had once lived. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in his Annals around 110 AD, mentions one “Christ, whom the procurator Pontius Pilate had executed in the reign of Tiberius.” The Jewish historian Josephus remarks on the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” The Talmud, a collection of Jewish writings, also refers to Christ, although it says he was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier called Panther. Doubts about the historicity of Christ did not surface until the 18th century. In short, whether or not JC was truly the Son of God, he was probably the son of somebody.
But Steve talking about Bob, over and over in his travels, would constitute a knowing, giant conspiracy.
I don’t see how Paul could have been a sincere convert when he was if Jesus was concocted out of whole cloth.
Whether the “We” passages in the Book of Acts were in fact written by Luke, or were borrowed from another author, somebody claimed to have traveled with Paul and wrote it down.
Are you suggesting *Paul *didn’t exist? I’m not sure what the ‘excluded middle’ is here. If Paul existed, he either believed in a historical Jesus or he was intentionally deceiving people. If Paul exists, I think historical Jesus existed. He was talking about a guy who had recently walked among them; he knew many of the apostles. He witnessed (with approval) the stoning of Stephen.
Depends on how much time I have. My Greek would definitely get better, and I’d probably pick up a decent working knowledge of Aramaic, too. I’d probably have a few glasses of wine with Jesus before getting on a ship to Alexandria.
Not exactly what you’re asking?
OK, then…
Rock-bottom scholarly estimates are 8000 by 100 CE.
Nero blamed the great fire on Christians in the year 64. Would he blame the fire on a group so small Romans weren’t familiar with them? Is it plausible that Christianity, which had been only in Judea before Paul, had now spread to Rome but had fewer than a thousand followers worldwide? And that’s 36 years before I claim the number is in the thousands.
For what it’s worth, Tacitus was a young child when the Great Fire occurred. I do not doubt the historicity of the famous passage in the Annals, but keep in mind it was written more than a generation after the event itself. However many Christians there were at Rome in AD 64, there were probably quite a bit more in AD 116. Tacitus was still knee-deep writing it when he died.
How so? What is your basis for saying anyone though this in the 1st century? How are you even defining “Christian?” There was more than one sect.
[quote[And altho we no longer have many records from that period, the ancient Romans certainly did. At no time did the Romans attempt to deny that Jesus was a actual real person, crucified, etc. And they certainly could have said “We have checked Pontius Pilate’s reports, and there’s no record of any such rabble-rouser existing, he is entirely made up.” In fact the whole idea of Jesus not being real didn’t come about until relatively recently, as these things go.
But to settle the issue- Cecil sez so:
Still, barring an actual conspiracy, 40 years is too short a time for an entirely mythical Christ to have been fabricated out of (heh-heh) whole cloth. (See below.) Certainly the non-Christians who wrote about him in the years following his putative death did not doubt he had once lived. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in his Annals around 110 AD, mentions one “Christ, whom the procurator Pontius Pilate had executed in the reign of Tiberius.” The Jewish historian Josephus remarks on the stoning of “James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.” The Talmud, a collection of Jewish writings, also refers to Christ, although it says he was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier called Panther. Doubts about the historicity of Christ did not surface until the 18th century. In short, whether or not JC was truly the Son of God, he was probably the son of somebody.[/QUOTE]
There are some factual problems with the above (the Roman reputation for having extensive records is pretty much a myth), but mostly it just doesn’t have anything to do with what I actually asked for. I did not ask for evidence that Jesus existed, nor am I contesting that he did. I asked for evidence for this claim made by Bup.
I’m asking what the evidence is that there were’ “several thousand Christians” by the end of the First Century, not evidence for the existence of Jesus.