Someonerandm: Did you see my evidence? I even posted a PDF.
Yes, I did. He just offered more evidence so I took it.
Ok, let me just throw a question.
What do you guys think about Jesus from a human point of view? Did he existed? Was he lunatic for saying he was the son of God, were he just using the people’s language, or was he saying that metaphorically? Was he a incredibly smart person, just smart or a regular person? Did he have a strong conviction about what was right and wrong, or did he just like the fame?
Well, I think it’s very possible he was a real person. I do not think he was anything more than a regular guy that had a very positive view on what the world should be. The interesting thing about the stories about Jesus is that the older the writings, the more of a regular person he seems. The later writings are where things get a little crazy. That kinda tells me that the whole new testament may have started as being based on some real events, or a real person. But I think the later information has little or no reflection on any real events. I think it’s a lot like the broken telephone game.
He probably did exist, and probably did claim to be the son of God, but the actual things he did are exaggerated as Max said.
I believe, based upon my research, that Jesus, the person, never actually existed. At least, not in the way described. Jesus appears to be an amalgamation of multiple prophets and religious figures such as Horus or Dionysus (among others).
The character of “Jesus” didn’t even appear in literature until long after his supposed ‘crucifixion’, ‘resurrection’, then ‘ascent into heaven’. No contemporary evidence has been found for this purported figure.
That’s not to say that some guy that was the inspiration for Jesus never existed, but I haven’t seen evidence that the guy ever did.
For example, the character of Harry Potter was inspired by real life events of the author JK Rowling. The real life events happened and that was the genesis of the Harry Potter character. Harry Potter, however, doesn’t exist. I feel the same for Jesus; perhaps some real life events happened that inspired the creation of the Jesus character, but Jesus himself probably never existed.
Until I see some evidence otherwise, that’s what I believe.
I must admit the total lack of first hand account, or even first hand witnessed account is troubling. I can’t help but feel if this was such a revolutionary event, that we would have more documentation about the events written DURING the time period.
Even if there was solid evidence he existed, there is nothing even close to evidence of supernatural occurrences in his life that is claimed.
the whole store of jesus (virgin mother) etc is largely equivalent to older stories relating to virgin mothers and “holy” sons which seem to have a largely celestial basis
watch a large portion of zeitgeist (regardless of its modern-day implications; the stuff about jesus seems to be based on largely historical facts)
Ok, let me see. I’ve seen on Discovery Channel that Galilee, at the time of Jesus’ life, was recently dominated by the Roman empire, which imposed hard taxes. That made the Galileans angry, they were about to begin a revolution. The people’s conditions were severe, many people that owned small portions of land had to sell because of the amount of taxes and were forced to become workers - which, by that time, was only done in last resort.
So, if I got the idea, you are suggesting that someone (Peter? Or the twelve apostles?) either invented some story, or began to tell the story of some old prophet or philosopher, or both. The story he told was distorted motivated by the will of the people to create a revolution. That ended up creating this character, Jesus, which was supposedly able to perform miracles and so on.
I’m going to read what Wikipedia has to say about this. For now, I disbelieve in the hypothesis that Jesus is a myth. The said motivation for the belief that Jesus did not exist is, according to Wikipedia, the “lack of eyewitnesses, a lack of direct archaeological evidence, the failure of certain ancient works to mention Jesus, and similarities early Christianity shared with then-contemporary religion and mythology”.
However, what would they expect? Jesus was a poor nobody who was killed little time after he became popular, when he decided to challenge the authority of the priests in Jerusalem. People used to write about kings and important people, but why would they write about Jesus during his life? Almost no one could write among those who followed him. Early Christians were persecuted, and, therefore, any documents they might have had would be destroyed either by themselves to prevent Roman authorities from finding them or by those authorities themselves, or even possibly by the early Catholic Church when they decided to hide or destroy all apocryphal documents about Jesus life. Among those destroyed, some real, important documents might have been destroyed.
Then we get into a problem. If no contemporary records exist, how did the people from later on know exactly what was said, what ‘miracles’ he supposedly performed, his interactions with his disciples, his teachings…and everything else about Jesus…?
Just because it’s reasonable to assume there is no evidence doesn’t mean that it is reasonable to make any assumptions that the evidence ever DID exist either…
I did not have time to complete the text. 
I was gonna say that, once that the lack of historical evidence of his existence is reasonable, the simpler way to explain the existence of a more or less consistent story of Jesus is to assume that Jesus existed. It is not proof of his existence, but it is the simpler hypothesis.
The documentaries I saw on Discovery portray a human Jesus unsatisfied with the great distance between rich and poor, with how priests made agreements with Roman soldiers (which can be seen as an agreement with the devil) and controlled the people to pay even more taxes to them (besides the big taxes that they had to pay to Cesar).
Jesus was unhappy to see God’s house to become a house of merchandise. His idea was then to tell people to help each other on those difficult times. I think he realized that angry - even towards your enemies - only bring more suffering to everyone. Violent rebellions - like one that occurred around 60 AD - would be violently slaughtered by Roman soldiers, and therefore would vanish soon.
He wanted a peaceful rebellion, that is more or less evident when he invades Jerusalem without a horse, an armor or a weapon, but in a donkey, completely disarmed but with the determination of who had the truth on his side. That was contrary to the idea of a Messiah to the people of that time. I believe the bible fails really badly to mention why the rebellion must be peaceful. Gandhi was able to see the reason and could explicitly said that the reason is that not responding to violence nor cowardice increases your opponent’s respect who then substitutes his blind anger with reason.
Therefore, to me, the fact that Paul and the apostles did not explain that in the early books could only happen if they were mere disciples, not masters. They only knew what to do, not the reason, and someone should had known the reason. It makes no sense to the existence of a perfect idea without someone behind it.
I’m not sure I agree with this. Without evidence, there is no hypothesis that is ANY more likely than any other plausible hypothesis. While the ideas of your hypothesis are reasonable, without evidence they are no more likely than any random idea that I could come up with that is plausible.
I’m having trouble explaining myself atm. I guess I’d have to sum it up as, yes it is plausible that Jesus was a real person ( at least a person that the writings are based upon ), but is it likely? Without evidence it’s impossible to make any reasonable statement as to the likelihood of his existence.
I, too, wouldn’t agree with this. The simpler hypothesis is that he was a fictional character to represent the struggle of the people in that time.
That is much simpler than Jesus actually existing and all record of him either never being written down or all evidence being destroyed and then hundreds of years later everyone knowing precise details of his life without any basis (except perhaps verbal history) to know it…
Wait a little bit, there is nothing that proves that the gospels appeared hundreds of years later, that is a little extreme. In fact, the canonical gospels are believed to be from the second half of the first century, which means, at most, around 70 years later, with the first one appearing only 30 years later. There is also Josephus, a Jew historian that made two references to Jesus (one of them in 94 AD) and died in 100 AD.
Also, the Pauline epistles are generally dated between 50 and 64 AD, and those letters tell about Jesus death, resurrection and the “memorial meal of bread and wine”.
As I’ve read, one argument for Jesus Myth Theory are that Mark was the only source known of Luke and Matthew, where, however, there are two alternative widely accepted hypothesis (The Two Source Hypothesis and the Two Gospel Hypothesis). As I can see, Mark being the only source does not explain similarities between Matthew and Luke that do not appear in Mark.
Other arguments against this theory is that Jesus’ story contained various embarrassed details (here)
Overall, I get Max’s point. As I said, my arguments aren’t a proof of his existence, he might as well not have existed. And I’m not a historian, so I can’t say which hypothesis is true. But, to me, his existence is still the simpler explanation.
Actually, it appears that Josephus didn’t mention Jesus and was added later by Christians, and the Pauline epistles have the same issues with authenticity. As for embarrassment, it could show the fact that Jesus was supposedly a man that had some of the failings of man.
The fact is, no contemporary evidence that has been authenticated as contemporary, mention Jesus.
Exactly.
okey, since you guys know how the Church back in the middle ages treated scientists, most of them came to the mid east to study, learn, and teach alongside the Muslims, and many of them also went to Andalusia (Spain), what’s your thoughts on this ?
Muslims were superior in the field of mathematics, but with the ruling against graven images (try to find images of people and such in mosques for example), the science of things like biology and such was subdued and lacked the…err…energy(?) required to truly do “real” science and innovate in those fields and that anything that ran in contrast with established teachings was dismissed.
Math, excellent. Science in Islam? Not so much.