The evidence that Jesus ever existed is weaker than you might think

[Soph0571]

Before the European Enlightenment, virtually all New Testament experts assumed that handed-down stories about Jesus were first recorded by eye witnesses and were largely biographical. That is no longer the case.

Assuming that the Jesus stories had their beginnings in one single person rather than a composite of several—or even in mythology itself—he probably was a wandering Jewish teacher in Roman-occupied Judea who offended the authorities and was executed. Beyond that, any knowledge about the figure at the center of the Christian religion is remarkably open to debate (and vigorously debated among relevant scholars).
-------

University of Sheffield’s Philip Davies—who believes that Christianity probably began with a single Jesus, acknowledges that the evidence is fragile and problematic. Davies argues that the only way the field of New Testament studies can maintain any academic respectability is by acknowledging the possibility that Jesus didn’t exist. He further notes this wouldn’t generate any controversy in most fields of ancient history, but that New Testament studies is not a normal case.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/evidence-jesus-ever-existed-weaker-might-think/

Interesting read...

[Kaleva]

1. I think people are asking the wrong question

It ought not be surprising that that there is scant evidence that Jesus existed given his supposed poverty, low social class, relatively short life and lack of travel. It would be incredible if we did. Most everyone agrees that Pontius Pilate was a real person, a person of wealth and position, but we know very little about him.

[Major Nikon]

27. Someone with a messianic claim performing miracles would have been noticed

The Romans wrote down pretty much anything notable. Feeding 5000 people with two fish and a few loaves of bread would have been legendary, yet nobody bothers to write it down at the time.

[Kaleva]

38. Being written down is no guarantee that it will not be lost to history

Alexander the Great was a pretty famous fella and one would think there'd be a wealth of first hand accounts written by people who knew Alexander but there is little as just a few fragments ind inscriptions survive.

Much of what we know about Herod the Great comes from one source and that is Josephus who was born some 41 years after Herod died.

[Major Nikon]

42. The examples you gave were not lost to history

It's extremely rare that original records survive, but the provenance of those records can build a case for their existence. Josephus frequently references other records which have been lost to history, but they can still be verified by other people referencing the same documents. As such a chain of evidence can be established. Multiple people known to exist that knew Alexander and Herod wrote things down. People that are known to exist referenced those writings. On and on it goes. That's how we know with a reasonable degree of certainty those people existed. This is not the case for Jesus. All we really know is Josephus references a person named Jesus had something of a ministry and was crucified. We don't know where he gets this information from. For all we know he could have just been repeating a myth that was already well established.

[Kaleva]

43. There may not have been any contemporaneous accounts of Jesus because he was deemed unimportant

He was supposedly poor, owning nothing but the clothes he wore.

There is the Paul the Apostle, who many historians believe was a real person, and who is widely accepted to have written at least 7 of the first books of the New Testament some 25 years after the death of Jesus. Paul names several of the disciples and gives 1st hand accounts on meeting several of them (Galatians 1-2).

[Major Nikon]

44. Not sure where your supposed information comes from

Jesus' allegedly adopted father was allegedly a carpenter which would have made him a tradesman and middle-class as would have been typical for a Jewish tradesman. Jesus allegedly paid taxes and had a treasurer, which suggests he had income from his ministry which was allegedly successful.

Paul never met Jesus unless you count the time the holy poltergeist allegedly whispered in his ear. The best source is actually James, allegedly the brother of Jesus, which we are reasonably sure is a real person and if we assume the Jesus figure existed we can further assume James knew him as a sibling. So in one sense we actually have a 2nd person account from someone we can be reasonably sure was a real person. However, both James and Paul were part of the early church, so if we consider Jesus was mythological both James and Paul (and others) would have profited from perpetuating that myth. That doesn't make for an independent source.

[James48]

2. I used to think he didn't exist.

Now I know he did. And does.

[PJMcK]

7. What changed your mind?

How do you "know?"

Thanks, in advance.

[James48]

25. I know it's hard to believe but...

He showed me.

I was 42 and dumb.

I’m 58 now, and even though it was for a short time 16 years ago (over about a six month period) I became absolutely, totally convinced with my own eyes, and personal experience, that without any doubt He is real.

I’ll just leave it at that.

And He will let you know too, if you ask.

[Mariana]

26. You say you were 42 and dumb.

Are all non-Christians dumb?

[James48]

30. No, of course not.

I was talking about me.

[Mariana]

33. I guess I don't understand the connection

between your Christianity and your intelligence. Would you explain it to me, please? You consider it important enough that you mentioned it in your post.

[Major Nikon]

28. You are right it is hard to believe

[safeinOhio]

3. You'd think a historical event like the Massacre of the Innocents

would be recorded somewhere in the records. Just one thing.

[Kaleva]

4. Why?

Herod the Great supposedly did many wicked things during his reign but there are no contemporaneous sources that document those crimes. Our primary source, Josephus, is one who lived close to a 100 years after Herod.

[pnwmom]

5. Many Christians don't believe stories in the Bible to be literal truth.

Catholics, for example, don't view scripture as a history or science book full of evidence-based facts.

This is an article from a Catholic Jesuit publication. It echoes what I first heard in CCD classes in 6th grade, when I asked the young Seminarian about the Adam and Eve story. His answer: we weren't meant to believe it literally.

https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/786/article/fundamental-challenge

I led a Bible study series recently at a parish in Manhattan, where most of the participants were hip, advanced-degree-holding professionals. . . . When the participants raised questions about scientific theories concerning the origins of the universe and humankind, I made reference to the 2004 statement by the Vatican-sponsored International Theological Commission, which spoke positively about the Big Bang theory. I also quoted Pope John Paul II’s affirming remarks on the theory of evolution.

Nonetheless, a number of individuals were shocked at the suggestion that the first and second chapters of Genesis did not contain literal, historically accurate accounts of creation. One woman protested, saying, “How do you know the world wasn’t made that way? You can’t prove otherwise!” Another was flabbergasted that I did not affirm the historicity of the talking serpent in Genesis 3: “Are you saying that God can’t create a talking snake?” Finally, an irate young man sent me e-mail to tell me, among other things, that my treatment of Genesis had no place in a Catholic parish and that I should consider becoming Protestant.

SNIP

Most Catholics who are literal readers of the Bible do not realize that this method is not a part of their faith tradition and that such interpretations have been repeatedly discouraged by Catholic scholars, pastors and bishops.

[Cartoonist]

9. That literal bs

Make up your mind. Is any part of the Bible true? When someone says a particular event didn't actually happen, how can they say any event did happen? If Adam didn't exist, then Jesus didn't. If Noah didn't exist, then Jesus didn't. When a book is full of lies, how can you claim one part of it to be true? It's not like a broken clock is right twice a day

[Mariana]

35. The big question is HOW does a Christian determine

which stories in the Bible really happened, and which ones are fiction. I've never received s straight answer to that question.

[Voltaire2]

16. Almost all christians believe that a person was executed and rose from the dead.

And that this person was a god, actually The God, one aspect of the trinitarian christian deity, and that this god-person was the result of one of the non-person forms of this god impregnating a woman named Mary without, you know, actually having sex with her.

It is babble of impossible nonsense, and yet billions of people believe it is literally true.

[trotsky]

19. Do the wafer and wine at communion literally become Jesus' body and blood?

Catholics have plenty of literal beliefs too.

[MineralMan]

20. Having it both ways creates a serious conflict.

A conflict that I think cannot really be resolved in any rational way.

Did Jesus rise from the dead and ascend into Heaven? Literally? If not, then what was the point? Those things, which are the core beliefs of Christianity either actually happened or they did not happen. There's no metaphorical truth there.

Does the host become the actual body and blood of Jesus? The Pope says so. The Catechism says so. Really? Either it does or it does not. If someone insists that it does, as the Catholic Church claims, then it is a laughing matter. If it does not, then the ritual does not make sense in any real way.

What is literal and what metaphorical? What's the author of that article's opinion, verse by verse?

The Jesuits are known for their rational discourse, but try asking one of the two questions above. You'll get a sputtering response, because neither thing makes any logical sense, nor is either a rational thing in a literal way. So, are both things metaphors? For what? And why does RCC doctrine clearly state that both things are literally true?

The answer typically given is that we are not supposedly capable of understanding them. They are "Mysteries." Fictions.

Fictions we are meant to believe as if they were literally true, even if they're not. And that's where the whole thing breaks down.

If Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven and a cracker and some wine turn into the literal body and blood of Jesus, then anything could be true, including all of the weird stories in the Old Testament.

So which is it? Literal truth or metaphor? You can't have it both ways. Truly.

Nonsense. All of it, in my opinion.

[NeoGreen]

10. I'm still waiting for independent verification of jesus's post bad-weekend zombies...

...

Matthew 27:52

New International Version
and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.

New Living Translation
and tombs opened. The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead.

Good News Translation
the graves broke open, and many of God's people who had died were raised to life.

King James Bible
And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.

So, after the not-really-dead-yet the-messiah-only-really-had-a-bad-weekend sacrifice, they were met with walking zombies.

But no one wrote about it in real time, and only maybe ~50-years later thought it was interesting enough to commit to parchment.

Can you say...."M...A...G...I...C!"?

Oiy vey, the credulity rules supreme.

[trotsky]

11. You'd think someone else might have noticed that.

"Grandma? I thought you died 5 years ago?"

[NeoGreen]

13. And, apparently, it wasn't just any grandma, these were Saints!...

...SAINTS!!! I tell you, waking up from the dead!

Walking, talking Zombie SAINTS!

And NOBODY took a selfie...metaphorically, on parchment....

O...M...G!

[mopinko]

12. seems to me there might be secondary evidence for something

like that. a ripple of females in the death records? or a change in the gender of property owners? were there mostly male property owners, then suddenly a shift in the inheritance pattern to unmarried daughters?

to me this is all just a history puzzle, but these are the stories i was raised on.

[struggle4progress]

31. That Herod killed his own wife and three of his own sons, and quite a few other people as well,

seems to be on record, so it's not a big stretch to think he might actually have killed some babies in a backwater too

[Mariana]

32. And not a stretch to think such a thing would likely be recorded.

Killing all the male children in a town would be unusual enough to attract attention, I would think. Have any kings ever done that, outside of the two Bible stories?

[struggle4progress]

37. It is quite common in history for the powerful to kill the weak without consequence

[Mariana]

39. I didn't ask about consequence.

I asked about records. Outside of the two Bible stories, is there any record anywhere of a ruler having all the male babies in a town, village, or area killed?

[struggle4progress]

41. Nobody bothers to remember what became of people they didn't care about

The history we know from records is almost entirely the history of the powerful

[uriel1972]

49. you might think that the Judeans...

Being a wealthy, powerful people within that area of the Roman Empire and also being a highly educated, civilized and literate people, might have left a written record of all their male children being killed. You know it's not as if they would have been indifferent.

They left many written accounts of far less traumatic experiences, that still survive today. Except nothing contemporary about Yeshu Ben Joseph, brother of James son of Miriam etc and the many miraculous/calamitous happenings around him.

Oh and the point of a census is to record things, so why is there no record of a census in Judea at that time? A lot of things don't stack up. That there was a person named Yeshu seems to be beyond doubt, only far too many Yeshu's, it's just a form of Joshua after all.

[struggle4progress]

50. The Christian gospels do not tell about wealthy powerful people but about the poor

[uriel1972]

51. Hmmm...

That doesn't solve the problem, you see. It's not the Gospels I was looking for, I know what's in them. I was looking for corroborating evidence that the male children of Judea were slaughtered.

It's a lot of male children from many different backgrounds, including the educated and literate, wealthy or not. Herod had many enemies, as did the Judeans. Yet none of them mention this mass slaughter, across an entire Roman province. It's hard to believe.

The Romans themselves would have been aghast at this kind of thing and yes the Romans would have used it against the Judeans. Pontius Pilate the rather sadistic and cruel anti-Jewish Roman Governor would have been loathe to let this opportunity to berate the people he reportedly detested escape.

The Jews of Judea were a rich and powerful people, the Romans did not mint the face of the Emperor on it's coinage in the region out of respect for the Jewish prohibition on graven images. You don't get that kind of respect from the Romans without serious clout.

Yet there is no evidence for a mass slaughter of Judean children. Unless you consider the rather later (and not at all contradictory) accounts in the Bible with all the miraculous comings and goings as undeniable truth. No evidence where evidence should exist doesn't help your case.

Oh yes above all else, do you think that the literate, wealthy or no wouldn't write down their grief and sorrow at the loss of their child? Do you not think that people would protest and gather, appeal to other powers and the Romans for help rather than carry out this massacre of their own children? Yet none of this is recorded by anyone outside the New Testament.

[struggle4progress]

53. You and I see different problems. Where you worry whether the stories are exactly true,

I notice tales reflecting much of the history of the rich and mighty misusing the poor and weak

you've never seen that the eagles of war
whose wings lent you glory
they were never no more than carrion crows
pushed the wrens from their nest
stole their eggs
changed their story

the mockingbird sings it
it's all that she knows

"ah what can I do?" say a powerless few

[struggle4progress]

45. Ludlow Massacre

[struggle4progress]

46. Sand Creek Massacre

[struggle4progress]

47. Burial of body parts of children killed in Nazi experiments

[struggle4progress]

48. Rwanda: children during the Tutsi genocide

OCT 11 2017
BY EMMANUEL SEHENE RUVUGIRO, CORRESPONDENT IN KIGALI

JusticeInfo: Approximately how many children were killed during the 1994 genocide?

Valérie Mukabayire: The genocide perpetrated against Tutsis in 1994 left more than a million people dead – 1,074,017 to be precise, according to the Rwandan Ministry for Local Administration. Children and young people under 24 were the main victims, representing 53.7%. It is difficult to establish the proportion of boys to girls, but we know that there were orders to kill boys and that they were the most persecuted, to the point that some dressed up as girls to try and survive.

Children are innocent, so why were they targeted?

The extermination of the Tutsi ethnic group was planned through a well elaborated and well taught ideology that the perpetrators took to heart. Targets were clearly identified as Tutsi and all associated with them or resembling them. “He who kills a serpent should not spare its eggs” was an injunction broadcast by hate media. This encouraged the Interahamwe militia to kill even children, saying that even babies could be threats in the future. “Didn’t Paul Kagame and Fred Rwigema, the military commanders of the RPF, flee the country on their mothers’ backs?” they repeated, regretting that they had let them flee abroad ...

https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/tribunals/ictr/34925-online-exhibition-pays-gruesome-tribute-to-child-suffering-in-rwandan-genocide.html

[NeoGreen]

34. You actually help make our point...

...events of history were recorded and those records have been preserved from the purported time and location of the magic events of the man-god-sky-daddy-avatar, except the magic events of man-god-sky-daddy-avatar.

[TomVilmer]

6. Any credible independent records would have been preserved and known...

... which they are not. I know some happy people with Jesus in their hearts, and good for them. I also know some unhappy ones, and sorry for those - but both groups might have felt the same way tugged into other sources of belief. Most are saying "I believe in Christ", so why this need to hunt for actual facts?

Facts are anyway difficult to find, even for recent history. We all remember the brutal images on TV when the chinese slayed the students at the Tiananmen Square - though they never existed...

[3Hotdogs]

8. Resurection is the most difficult part to accept. If you have trouble beliving in it,

come to my place of business at 5:00 and watch my workers suddenly come to life.

[Bradshaw3]

52. Good one!

[MineralMan]

14. Faith. You must have faith, see?

Faith is evidence of, well, faith. If you have faith, it must be true that you have faith.

[Pope George Ringo II]

15. On the other hand, a cannibal cult has been fantasizing about leftovers for 2000 years.

One assumes they must have eaten somebody to start it all off.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

17. In the distant future

people are going to be convinced that Paul Bunyan was a real figure. And Batman, and Superman and Spiderman and all the other comic book characters movies are being made of.

Even now, look at all the people who believe the DaVinci Code is historical fact.

Too many people are incapable of thinking critically, and for the religious, they are taught NOT to think critically when it comes to their beliefs. Which sets the groundwork for disbelieving in science.

[Pope George Ringo II]

18. Hey, now. Obviously Batman and Superman are fictional.

But I have a personal relationship with Spiderman. I know in my heart he's real. And even if you don't, how can you not admire the original message he brought to the world that with great power comes great responsibility.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. LOL!

[edhopper]

22. You'd be surprised at how many

Christains believe the Gospels were written by the Apostles.

I have run into quite a few.

[MineralMan]

23. Oh, yes, and they won't listen to an explanation that they were not.

In fact, some get very testy about it, indeed.

[edhopper]

24. They all get

very testy.

[trotsky]

36. "You are attacking my faith!" n/t

[Mariana]

40. More often they say

"You are attacking me because of my faith!"

[WhiteTara]

29. I believe this is the foundation of jesus reincarnation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris_myth

http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/Egyptian_goddess_Isis.htm

https://www.learnreligions.com/who-was-the-egyptian-goddess-isis-2561966

And again. There is the story of Inanna:Queen of Heaven and Earth. Her story is told on tablet from Syria, older than Isis, I think.

https://archive.org/stream/input-compressed-2015mar28a29/done-compressed-2015mar28a29_djvu.txt

[Major Nikon]

54. Judeo-Christian myths are collections of oral history

Eventually this oral history found it's way to written form generations and in some instances centuries after the events they describe. As such it's a safe bet many of them are going to be adapted from earlier oral histories.

All of this happened during a period in which small bands of nomadic tribes were coalescing into larger civilizations by virtue of conquest and cross-cultural trade. When one culture is assimilated or associates with another such things will blend together. Monotheism and Christianity's tritheism simply worked more efficiently as a method of control which is why they were mandated throughout western and middle eastern civilizations. But it's not as if paganism was going to simply vanish. It was instead absorbed and modified to make it more palatable.