Was Jesus a real person?

WooPeeA

Why not? We have as many evidences for existence of Jesus as we have for French revolution or any other historical moments, a texts.

So why we accept all other moments we learn in schools but we cannot accept Jesus as person who really lived in the Middle-East over 2000 years ago?

I'm not saying he's God or something like that, but just as a human. Why so many atheists/agnostics reject his existence?

Dave!

Most people on here seem to accept that he existed...

I certainly have no problems with the idea that he existed. However I'm not really familiar with the historical evidence or lack thereof.

Nodin

WooPeeA wrote: »

Why not? We have as many evidences for existence of Jesus as we have for French revolution or any other historical moments, a texts.

Mais non.

Dades

I briefly closed this thread as it was so similar in nature to this one. Then I thought, what the heck.

Do many people believe that there was never a guy called Jesus - i.e. even a hippie carpenter?

fatmammycat

Weird. I don't know a single non believer in a god that doubts Jesus the man existed. OP, how did you come up with this line of thinking?

WooPeeA

fatmammycat wrote: »

Weird. I don't know a single non believer in a god that doubts Jesus the man existed. OP, how did you come up with this line of thinking?

I spoke with few people that claimed Jesus and his apostles are fiction as well as other things we can read in Bible, Koran and other holly books.

Many put everything into one box called "fiction made to control the public". So my thought was how can they be that sure the whole history is not written not that long ago to control the people. Same way of thinking, same evidences.

Nodin

I reckon there was probably a guy called Jesus. Probably more of a Rabbi/Carpenter, turned wandering holy dude. Anything else is filled with too many "maybes" and "possiblys" for my liking. And obviously I don't accept the supernatural element.

ChocolateSauce

I reckon there was probably a man named Jesus, and I think he honestly believed he was the son of god, or at least some kind of holy man who was later elevated to that position by his followers.

Now Mohammad on the other hand, he was not mentally ill, he was just a highly ambitious and intelligent liar.

IMO.

Genghiz Cohen

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

Now Mohammad on the other hand, he was not mentally ill, he was just a highly ambitious and intelligent liar.

IMO.

Burn the infidel!

Jesus was probably not real. But everything is probably.

darjeeling

WooPeeA wrote: »

Why so many atheists/agnostics reject his existence?

Like most here, I don't think most A+As reject the existence of a historical man known to us as Jesus.

WooPeeA wrote: »

I'm not saying he's God or something like that, but just as a human.

Can we be sure of that? You see, the word 'evidences' - i.e. here:

WooPeeA wrote: »

We have as many evidences for existence of Jesus as we have for French revolution or any other historical moments, a texts.

WooPeeA wrote: »

Same way of thinking, same evidences.

... is one I normally associate with Christian apologetics.

fitz0

I'm doubtful of whether there was a man called Jesus. Until Im shown evidence thats not a bible or any sort of holly scripture Ill continue doubting. But it doesn't really matter now if he was real or not. He's so ingrained on the minds of people nowadays he's real whether he existed or not.

Then again he could be like Lao Tzu, considered to be a collection of wise men in Asia before 0AD whose writings are just gathered under the one name.

WooPeeA

fitz0 wrote: »

I'm doubtful of whether there was a man called Jesus. Until Im shown evidence thats not a bible or any sort of holy scripture Ill continue doubting.

Only believers call it "holly".

stevencarrwork

WooPeeA wrote: »

Why not? We have as many evidences for existence of Jesus as we have for French revolution or any other historical moments, a texts.

So why we accept all other moments we learn in schools but we cannot accept Jesus as person who really lived in the Middle-East over 2000 years ago?

I'm not saying he's God or something like that, but just as a human. Why so many atheists/agnostics reject his existence?

There is probably a 40% chance that Jesus existed, going down to 20% if you say he was 'Jesus of Nazareth'

Paul, of course, denied that Jesus was a human being

Galatians 1:1 :-

Paul, an apostle.... (my apostleship doesn't derive from human sources!) Nor did it come through a human being. It came through Jesus the Messiah, and God the father who raised him from the dead.

Paul might just mean that the resurrected Jesus was not a human being. He said in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus had become a life-giving spirit.

One interesting fact is that as soon as the church enters public record, in Acts 2, or in any letters (by Paul, James, Jude, the author of Hebrews etc), then almost the entire cast of Gospel characters vanish as though they had never existed.

The BVM, Joseph, viritually all the disciples, Lazarus, Bartimaeus, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon of Cyrene, his sons, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Salome , 'the other Mary' - all vanish as though they had never existed.....

Paul complains in 2 Corinthians about Christians who readily accepted a false Jesus.

For all we know, Jesus of Nazareth might be one of those false Jesus's that some Christians all too readily accepted as real.

studiorat

Major Fitzroy Richard Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan (Lord Raglan) in his book The Hero (1936) systematises hero myths.
From an historical point of view he puts forward a list of incidents which occur with regularity in hero-myths of all cultures.

1. Hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grand father to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.

Jesus scores between 18 and 20 points. Harry Potter scores a measly 8.

http://department.monm.edu/classics/courses/Clas230/MythDocuments/HeroPattern/default.htm

Hivemind187

fatmammycat wrote: »

Weird. I don't know a single non believer in a god that doubts Jesus the man existed. OP, how did you come up with this line of thinking?

*waves hand* I doubt!

As studiorat has alluded to I'm firmly in the "composite character" camp. there isn't any reasonable archaeological evidence for the existance of a single christ figure and the historical accounts are suspect at best.

The figure presented as "christ" is likely the composition of a number of other myths, rumours or acts of other individuals attributed to one "hero" character.

Valmont

I'd say the convergence of various historical accounts suggests that a really great guy called Jesus did actually I exist. I believe so anyway.

I then think that this guy quickly became the victim of the world's most progressive and bizarre case of the 'purple monkey dishwasher' phenomenon and we consequently ended up with Christianity.

AtomicHorror

studiorat wrote: »

Major Fitzroy Richard Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan (Lord Raglan) in his book The Hero (1936) systematises hero myths.
From an historical point of view he puts forward a list of incidents which occur with regularity in hero-myths of all cultures.

1. Hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grand father to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.

Jesus scores between 18 and 20 points. Harry Potter scores a measly 8.

http://department.monm.edu/classics/courses/Clas230/MythDocuments/HeroPattern/default.htm

Optimus Prime would probably score pretty well too. Well, he was a humble labourer who suffered death and was resurrected as our saviour. And then he died at least twice more only to be resurrected for yet more messianic shenanigans. Hell, he kicks Jesus' ass!

Daemonic

WooPeeA wrote: »

Why not? We have as many evidences for existence of Jesus as we have for French revolution or any other historical moments, a texts.

So why we accept all other moments we learn in schools but we cannot accept Jesus as person who really lived in the Middle-East over 2000 years ago?

I'm not saying he's God or something like that, but just as a human. Why so many atheists/agnostics reject his existence?

As I posted in the other thread dades mentioned...

Daemonic wrote: »

To answer the OP, I'm of much the same opinion as a few other posters.
There was very probably a Jesus who was a charismatic preacher/healer. Of all the stories and 'miracles' attributed to him I'm sure a few were originally about other similar preachers or healers of the time but were added to the Jesus myth as the brand was bigged up by his followers. No harm in a little creative advertising when trying to convince potential customers.

Flamed Diving

WooPeeA wrote: »

Why not? We have as many evidences for existence of Jesus as we have for French revolution or any other historical moments, a texts.

There is archaeological evidence for the French Revolution.

There is archaeological evidence for Alexander the Great.

There is none for Jesus.

Fanny Cradock

Flamed Diving wrote: »

There is archaeological evidence for the French Revolution.

There is archaeological evidence for Alexander the Great.

There is none for Jesus.

The French revolution can not be compared to events in distant antiquity. Nor is it reasonable to expect the same type of evidence for Jesus as we have for Alexander the Great. One was an itinerant preacher who operated in a relativity unimportant backwater region, the other aggressively expanded and ruled the largest empire of its time.

When we go back to the earliest written evidence for Jesus (yes, that means the NT) and compare this to what exists for figures like Alexander and Julius Caesar you find that there is no comparison. There are 1000's of NT copies dating back to about 100- 150 years after Jesus (and a few fragments that are believed by some to date earlier) compared to a handful of texts written 100's of years after Alexander or Caesar.

Nodin

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

When we go back to the earliest written evidence for Jesus (yes, that means the NT) and compare this to what exists for figures like Alexander and Julius Caesar you find that there is no comparison. There are 1000's of NT copies dating back to about 100- 150 years after Jesus (and a few fragments that are believed by some to date earlier) compared to a handful of texts written 100's of years after Alexander or Caesar.

A 1000,000 copies of Lord of the Rings doesn't make it any more true, however.

I don't understand what you mean by "compared to a handful of texts written 100's of years after Alexander or Caesar". There are a number of texts from the time of Caesar, including his own works.

Flamed Diving

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

The French revolution can not be compared to events in distant antiquity. Nor is it reasonable to expect the same type of evidence for Jesus as we have for Alexander the Great. One was an itinerant preacher who operated in a relativity unimportant backwater region, the other aggressively expanded and ruled the largest empire of its time.

When we go back to the earliest written evidence for Jesus (yes, that means the NT) and compare this to what exists for figures like Alexander and Julius Caesar you find that there is no comparison. There are 1000's of NT copies dating back to about 100- 150 years after Jesus (and a few fragments that are believed by some to date earlier) compared to a handful of texts written 100's of years after Alexander or Caesar.

Nodin wrote: »

A 1000,000 copies of Lord of the Rings doesn't make it any more true, however.

I don't understand what you mean by "compared to a handful of texts written 100's of years after Alexander or Caesar". There are a number of texts from the time of Caesar, including his own works.

What Nodin said.

In addition, archaeological evidence by far outweighs anything written down, when it comes to ancient history. There is no way of verifying who wrote any of these texts, including those about Alexander, et al. But when you find evidence of a battle at an archaeological site, its kinda hard to believe that someone went around planting shards of swords, pots, etc.

So, we have archaeological evidence for many of the documented 'great people' of ancient history. Yet, we have yet to find a shard of evidence in favour of Jesus, Moses, and all the other fairy tales.

Funny, that.

Fanny Cradock

Nodin wrote: »

I don't understand what you mean by "compared to a handful of texts written 100's of years after Alexander or Caesar". There are a number of texts from the time of Caesar, including his own works.

Apologies. With regards to Caesar I should have specified something like The Gallic Wars.

Nodin

Well apart from that, theres correspondence, particularily with Cicero. Also he's tied in with others and was influential in their careers and many events.

Alexander being farther back is slightly more problematic, but again, theres suffecient references, from enough sources, to have an agreed outline to his life, and career. As with Caesar, killing people in large numbers on the international stage, though reprehensible, has been an excellent way to be recorded by history.

(I might add that as Alexander was a man who began to be mythologised shortly after his own death, its a sort of double edged sword to be waving).

None of this really gets us anywhere though. As I said in a previous thread, the activities of Jesus during his life were on too local a level and too small a scale to really register. This doesn't mean that they didn't happen at all, but its just got to be taken on faith.

stevencarrwork

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

The French revolution can not be compared to events in distant antiquity. Nor is it reasonable to expect the same type of evidence for Jesus as we have for Alexander the Great. One was an itinerant preacher who operated in a relativity unimportant backwater region, the other aggressively expanded and ruled the largest empire of its time.

Remind me where the earliest Christian writer , Paul, says Jesus was an intinerant preacher who operated in a relatively unimportant backwater region (you know, the one which involved Rome in a massive war, just a few decades later, the one which people like the Bishop of Durham claim was a hotbed of anti-Roman violence even during the time of Jesus)

Romans is a long book on theology , where Paul cannot find one direct quote from his Lord and Saviour , to use in a book about how this Lord and Saviour changed all the ground rules of theology!

Romans 10 explains why the Israelites were not Christians


Of course, it never occurs to Paul to say that the Jews rejected Jesus personally, or rejected the miracles and signs Jesus performed, or even rejected any evidence for the resurrection.

Paul's explanation of why the Israelites rejected Jesus is that they had either never heard of him, or they rejected Christian preaching about Jesus.

'How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
"Their voice has gone out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.'

Paul makes a good point. How could the Jews have beleived in Jesus unless somebody had told them about Jesus? Without Christian preachers, nobody would have heard of Jesus.

And, it goes without saying, that Paul thinks people believe through hearing the message about Jesus, and gives no thought to explaining how some people believed because they had seen Jesus preach.

Paul explains in Romans 13 - Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.'

Rulers hold no terror for those who do right?

I guess Paul was a little blase about rulers flogging, mocking, whipping,beating , stripping people, putting crowns of thorns on their heads and then crucifying them. People who had that done to them brought 'judgment on themslves' by rebelling against what God had instituted....

Flamed Diving

I would take anything written before the printing press with a pillar of salt, tbh.

Fanny Cradock

stevencarrwork, you already have another post in the Christianity forum where you misrepresent N.T. Wright and Paul. I suggest you keep it there.

stevencarrwork

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

stevencarrwork, you already have another post in the Christianity forum where you misrepresent N.T. Wright and Paul. I suggest you keep it there.

I did no misrepresenting of Wright or Paul. I quoted their exact words.

I shall quote Wright's exact words again 'Paul, an apostle.... (my apostleship doesn't derive from human sources!) Nor did it come through a human being. It came through Jesus the Messiah, and God the father who raised him from the dead.'

The misrepresenting is by people who claim that when Paul said he did *not* get his message from a human being, he got it from Jesus, what he actually meant was he *DID* get his message from a human being, who was Jesus.

The misrepresenting is by people who make Paul say the exact opposite of what he wrote.

I get tired of people who will argue that black is white if they beleive that something is white.

Fanny Cradock

stevencarrwork wrote: »

I did no misrepresenting of Wright or Paul. I quoted their exact words.

I shall quote Wright's exact words again 'Paul, an apostle.... (my apostleship doesn't derive from human sources!) Nor did it come through a human being. It came through Jesus the Messiah, and God the father who raised him from the dead.'

The misrepresenting is by people who claim that when Paul said he did *not* get his message from a human being, he got it from Jesus, what he actually meant was he *DID* get his message from a human being, who was Jesus.

The misrepresenting is by people who make Paul say the exact opposite of what he wrote.

I get tired of people who will argue that black is white if they beleive that something is white.

It is not a debate for this thread. You have made exactly the same points on a thread in the Christianity forum. I'm not sure what else you expect to get by bring the debate here.

stevencarrwork

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

It is not a debate for this thread. You have made the exact same points on a thread in the Christianity forum. There is no point having the same debate here.

Pray do tell what the answer was for why Paul wrote what he did in Romans 10?

And do say why Paul did not produce one direct quote from his Lord and Saviour when writing 16 chapters of theology in Romans about his Lord and Saviour?

What 'debate' was there, when Christians could not produce an answer?

Fanny Cradock

stevencarrwork wrote: »

Pray do tell what the answer was for why Paul wrote what he did in Romans 10?

And do say why Paul did not produce one direct quote from his Lord and Saviour when writing 16 chapters of theology in Romans about his Lord and Saviour?

What 'debate' was there, when Christians could not produce an answer?

Romans 10 as nothing to do with this thread. You just hopped in with something that you clearly feel is of pressing importance. If you really want to discuss a certain passage then take it up in the Pauline thread you have already stared.