All the historical evidence for Jesus in one room
Now whether Jesus was a divine being, sure that picture depicts the evidence of that. But we "know" that a man named Jesus certainly existed and was crucified.
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Thank you. We know that Mohammed existed, yet I don't believe that an angel came to him with the words of the Quran, and I don't believe in islam. Most scholars agree that Jesus existed, so it feels counter productive to try to assert that he didn't exist. His existence is not a threat to my worldview, and besides, I follow the truth wherever it leads, not just where it's convenient.
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The problem with all of this "evidence" is that Christians don't want to officially recognize any of it because it proves Jesus or Joseph as he was probably called. Was just a normal guy.
I am still waiting for the evidence. We have Paul who didn't see anything, despite being in the area when it all supposedly went down, we have him call into question the credibility of the eyewitnesses, and despite spend decades with Christians only seems to know 11 facts about Jesus. Then we get complete silence for 50 years and an off-hand mention of the some hearsay by a man who believed in a literal Adam and Eve as historical fact.
Meanwhile every single part of the Jesus con is found in the stories and history that was around at the time. It is a hacky unoriginal derivative work with all of the evidence conveniently missing.
That wiki article presents zero historical evidence and is full of references to biblical scholars claiming there was s areal historical Jesus because the bible says so. Pure garbage source.
This argument is like saying “some guy named john did in fact live and was sentenced to life in prison in Louisiana”.
There was, in fact, lots of jeshua’s and Jehoshua’s that were alive at the time- and many of them executed. That’s not credible evidence for the existence of the biblical Jesus. It was a very common name, after all.
The reduction Jesus doesn't even work. Even if you reduce him down to some guy named Jesus who pissed the Romans off you wouldn't be able to account for the community that popped up. Additionally you still can't prove that this diet Jesus event happened, you just lowered the claim so much that it is not plausible instead of impossible.
What does explain the the community would be deliberate fraud. A cult lead by James and Peter about an mythical being.
What does explain the the community would be deliberate fraud. A cult lead by James and Peter about an mythical being.
It's a lot easier to convince people you're the successor to the of some kind of deity rather being some kind of deity yourself. A LOT easier. Also... sets up plausible deniability if things get caught out. "I DIDN"T KNOW, HONEST....! he duped me too!"
Yeps. Even Tacticus mentions how weird it was that the leader was dead but yet the movement continued. If the leader is very much alive and making up stories about his dead brother for decades it makes more sense.
Also had a precedent in Jewish history. When the temple was closed the leader of the revolt died and his son (so many references to Peter being the successor to Jesus) took over and eventually did restore the temple.
Show me the evidence, not what theist apologists argued later via tampered hearsay decades removed from the facts.
Ok, Pompeii. Less than a century later, before Constantine reskinned the Roman religion with the Christian label, we've found hidden shrines and symbols used by followers of Jesus. And uncovered very recently - not much room for it to be falsified. There's also contemporary accounts that spread extremely fast throughout the Roman empire and beyond, but those weren't buried under ash until the modern era.
That's a long way to go in very little time - that's only maybe 3-4 degrees away from the original source. Not nearly long enough for a mythical figure to develop organically
You can dispute the details, but someone must've been the figurehead at the very least. The gospels themselves hint at the events being staged to some extent by a small group spreading an ideology according to a literal plan - the public events literally start with Jesus's cousin gathering support for the movement, and then Jesus goes around recruiting specific people as apostles
The Romans also kept records - there's a lot of corroborating evidence for certain events spread too far and wide for a pre-information age society to fabricate. Even things like his birthdate - I think they've been able to narrow it down to a few days in July, during the census, where we had accounts of a temporary new star in the sky
Even the papers that are given clickbait-y headlines like "historians dispute the existence of Jesus" generally dispute certain aspects, there was almost certainly a historical figure named Jesus who was killed by the Romans for inciting a resistance movement
That’s a long way to go in very little time - that’s only maybe 3-4 degrees away from the original source. Not nearly long enough for a mythical figure to develop organically
It went down in 79AD, a fully 43-46 years after the supposed events and at least 41.5 to 39 years after Paul began his missionary trips across the Roman Empire. To be clear you are arguing a strawman. I believe Paul was real and I believe James was real. I think it was a con job. This wasn't a myth that organically made itself, this was centuries of Jewish legends/stories/culture that was hijacked.
Also I asked for contemporary source not hearsay "3-4" times removed.
You can dispute the details, but someone must’ve been the figurehead at the very least.
Sure they had a mythical figurehead. It would explain why the Romans left them alone for decades after the supposed events. They were running a mystery-cult / charity organization and were saying that their leader had already been killed. Also would explain why Paul didn't know pretty much anything about the details.
The gospels themselves hint at the events being staged to some extent by a small group spreading an ideology according to a literal plan - the public events literally start with Jesus’s cousin gathering support for the movement, and then Jesus goes around recruiting specific people as apostles
Could be. I admit I hadn't thought of that. I promise to look into it. I assumed that they were sorta reverse engineering the "known" events. Building a narrative after the fact, a retrocon.
The Romans also kept records - there’s a lot of corroborating evidence for certain events spread too far and wide for a pre-information age society to fabricate. Even things like his birthdate - I think they’ve been able to narrow it down to a few days in July, during the census, where we had accounts of a temporary new star in the sky
And those records don't show anyone by that name in that city or being crucified. As for the star thing keep in mind the Gospel writers were multiple decades later well enough time to fit the data to the narrative. The census is a classic example of this. It was known that a census had been done around that time it was also "known" that Jesus was from Nazareth but was supposed to be from Bethlehem so the census is given for the reason.
Even the papers that are given clickbait-y headlines like “historians dispute the existence of Jesus” generally dispute certain aspects, there was almost certainly a historical figure named Jesus who was killed by the Romans for inciting a resistance movement
I don't care about consensus or other writers. I care about evidence. Please present it. You gave me evidence that there were Christians decades later, which is not what I asked for.
That is just wrong. There isn’t any evidence anything he said was true, but we know that the guy that the Bible was written about existed and was crucified and taught what would become christianity. Now the evidence is essentially that the book exists about him, and that he is referenced in other adjacent religious texts, but that evidence is still more than the evidence that it was made up, and is still enough that it’s widely believed that he was a real guy. If what he taught was true or not is another story.
There isn’t any evidence anything he said was true, but we know that the guy that the Bible was written about existed and was crucified and taught what would become christianity.
We actually don't know any of that, and that is not what the historical consensus is either.
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I’m an atheist and this is a dumb take
You easily could've just said God instead and avoided a lot of controversy. Leave Christians to ignore the history books. Don't go down to their level.
It's pretty bold to say that there's no evidence for him.
For starters, the claim that he existed is rather unextraordinary. That he was the messiah might be extraordinary, but just that a dude with that name who did some of the same things isn't too remarkable. This means that we don't need a ton of strong evidence. Compounded with the fact that he was (if he existed) poor, and therefore it's not expected that he'd leave much evidence, we need hardly anything to say the man existed.
Since there seems to be a consensus by experts that he existed, and since neither of us are experts (probably, I don't actually know about you), you need to either present a reason to be skeptical of those experts or present evidence contradicting their claim.
I'm not able to filter through everything Josephus and Tacitus wrote, interpret it in the intended context, and judge it's validity. Thus I need to trust other people's findings.
If you could show that these experts are unreliable (perhaps they're religiously motivated, though I think secular historians agree), then we could start from scratch and the burden of proof would be on people claiming the man existed.
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Just making shit up now? Folks there are plenty of memes to be had without fabrication of patently untrue comments.
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OP, I am with you.
I have researched the historicity of Jesus in the past to try to confirm my faith, but all we have is either Christian sources or sources written more than 300 later after Jesus supposedly died.
What we are sure of is that Paul really existed, and it's him who mainly spread this new religion. That he was telling the truth, no, we will never be sure.
I am sorry for the other comments here. I thank you for you submission but seeing the response of the rest of the community here I am going to block it and move on.
A Dutch historian wrote a book that analyzed Paul's actions as if he was a Roman double agent who had to stop religious uprising against the Roman empire. If you read the bible in that way it gets hard to ignore it. The romans were treated as an instrument of god, whose taxation should be payed without disagreement.
It's my personal favorite interpretation of the christian faith ever. How a disinforming operation became bigger than the institution it was meant to protect and eventually overtook it.
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Arent historians pretty sure jesus existed? You know he just couldnt walk on water and turn water into wine and everything else they say about him lol.
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Who is this for? What point are you trying to make? There is arguable evidence for a jesus-like character (as seen in the comments), so this post really helps no one and makes you look like an uninformed, angsty, immature person.
And maybe you are and will grow out of it to be helpful to any sort of community, but this post isn't part of that.
There is arguable evidence for a jesus-like character
May I see it?
so this post really helps no one and makes you look like an uninformed, angsty, immature person.
Will personal attacks produce the evidence?
Simple Google search. Feel free to read a bit at your leisure.
will personal attacks produce evidence
No, but elementary Google searches and critical thinking will
Is the plural of opinions evidence? Is something about history true because the majority of people say it is true or because it did happen?
Why not just present evidence instead of an argument ad populism?
That's like saying there's no evidence of Alexander the great, Julius Caesar, Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare. Sure we don't have photos or anything, but we assume the historical records is accurate enough.
Except we have evidence of those men existing and in the Socrates the story is believable enough and consistent and there is a direct eyewitness. We can't say either about Jesus
The only evidence that Socrates existed are the writings of Plato. Socrates can also be interpreted as a purely Socratic device rather than a literal person.
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Exactly. There was a recent episode of Within Reason where the guest discussed the methodology for piecing together historical fact about Jesus.
In his (expert, mind you) opinion Jesus is a real historical figure who likely claimed to be a prophet.
i don't think it matters how expert of an opinon one has when considering confidence on whether someone truly existed or not.
being an expert in history wouldn't help you confidently confirm that anything you read wasn't part of a big popular information conspiracy unfortunately.
their examples of Shakespeare, Socrates, etc. are much more strongly suggestive of being true because of a larger sample size of "historical evidence" from people claiming to exist at the same time as those who wrote about them, and the several events popularly known to be directly caused by them, and not some 50 years removed gospels which may very possibly have been hear-say. (told indirect information, then made a claim based on that)
regardless, it pretty much doesn't matter in philosophy whether someone exists or not since the important thing is the idea associated with the person. the issue is that theology is associated with Jesus, and since theism is a confident belief position, it just doesn't make a ton of sense to live and believe by historical evidence alone. i think complimenting historical evidence with empirical science is a lot more reasonable
to me this would be like if someone had a box, and i really wanted to know what was in it, and they told me it was a carrot and sent me off. now i can believe it was a carrot because they were right there and if they were honest then it should be a carrot in the box, but to personally commit myself to that belief, i would have the see inside the box myself.
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It's mostly due to inertia, because the entire system used to be 100% Christian, historians obviously believed in Jesus.
That has resulted in the scholarly consensus carrying over until today, plus many places you can't work, if you deny the existence of Jesus.
It would be interesting to see what the consensus is among scholars from Japan, or some other non traditionally Christian country.
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The caption left out an important word: All the contemporary historical evidence for Jesus.
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"The signs are all there, is your lack of faith to stop you from seeing them" - [ Says every religion EVER]
Tacitus wrote of him and "Chrestians" that is all you need bro
Tacitus wrote more than a century after Jesus purportedly died.
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