I think Lemmy has a problem with history in general, since most people on here have degrees/training in STEM. I see a lot of inaccurate “pop history” shared on here, and a lack of understanding of historiography/how historians analyze primary sources.
The rejection of Jesus’s historicity seems to be accepting C S Lewis’s argument - that if he existed, he was a “lunatic, liar, or lord,” instead of realizing that there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
scholars agree that a Jewish man named Jesus of Nazareth existed in the Herodian Kingdom of Judea in the 1st century AD.
But,
There is no scholarly consensus concerning most elements of Jesus’s life as described in the Christian and non-Christian sources.
Exactly, and at that point, does it make sense to consider that person the same as the one from the new testament?
I think a big point of contention in the debate is that people say ‘Jesus was(n’t) real’ without clarifying whether they mean the former or the latter bit of your comment. I have a hunch there’d be more agreement if everyone was more clear. Thanks for the helpful comment!
People should be mindful of the phrasing. The title of this post, for example, is misleading trying to make it seem more than there just being records of a person who had the name Jesus. Nobody would call me a historical figure in the future just because I existed.
I do not give a fuck about this evidence. I want evidence that this man is what Christianity is founded on. It doesn’t need magic or anything, but more than just a fucking name having existed for me to even start thinking it’s the same dude.
It’s the name with the explicit connection to James, a leader of the early church.
There’s a difference between the idea of a pseudo-fictional composite character, like King Arthur who was constructed centuries after his time, and a real historical guy who existed and had stories written about what he said.
Consider how much evidence we have for Pythagoras. Pythagoras was also a weird religious cult leader, but I’d expect most here would know him for the Pythagorean theorem. Which he didn’t come up with. Does that not make him enough of a “Pythagoras” for you?
You have to gauge your sense of skepticism. There’s a difference between “oh, Gilgamesh seems to be showing up in all of these King’s List documents that claim thousands of years of dynastic dominance which are 80% bullshit to oil up a kingship’s perceived position in the world.” and “oh, here’s a bunch of texts about an unusual rogue ‘rabbi’ that developed a following; there’s some probably exaggerated claims of healing, an oddly novel resurrection story that has more added to it as each Gospel is written.”
Read just the resurrection, Mark-> Matthew-> Luke->John to see how the more fanciful stuff develops. Heck - maybe even read the New Testament in chronological order - starting with the letters of Paul and see them as dealing with situations happening in real time. Treat it as a ‘found footage’/‘ambiguous narrator’ collection. A murder mystery.
There’s a difference between reading the Bible as a religious text, to either prove or disprove, and as a compilation of vastly different documents, by vastly different authors, writing across centuries.
For a modern example, think about John of God - one of the faith healing charlatans that Oprah promoted. Will people who live in the next few centuries automatically discount his existence because they find it occasionally next to a description of his supposed miracles, which accounts are perhaps more likely to survive than those of his sexual assault allegations? Will the things that he will have said to have said not be accurate, even if other information about him is not?
At the end of the day, there’s just as much evidence for the existence of several early historical figures that we don’t doubt the existence of. I think it’s reasonable to not privilege the text as anything other than a primary source document, and recognize that a lot of similar supernatural claims have been added to multiple real world figures in history.
I think the difference between doubting Pythagoras and doubting Jesus is that no one is claiming g Pythagoras existed to bolster their claims on holding a moral superiority. A lot of historical research (especially early on) into the history of Jesus is done by religious scholars who are explicitly seeking to back up things they already believe. I don’t trust them. Most of the consensus is built upon this pre-conceived idea that he’s real, and so the support is on shaky footing.
No one really cares if Pythagoras existed or not, so it’s not worth considering. A lot of people hold a certain (potentially harmful, or at least ignorant of reality) view on the world because of a supposed figure named Jesus, and the fact there isn’t much evidence he existed at all pretty heavily breaks the illusion we know he did miraculous stuff. If it’s questionable that he even existed then it’s certainly questionable that he did anything special.
The fact is, historical consensus is built on backing up a belief, in this case. Not on fact originally. It becomes incredibly hard and dangerous to your career to question the consensus without evidence —and you can’t have evidence of non-existence. That means anytime anyone questions it people yell “most historians agree!” and no further questions are asked. I think it’s much healthier to question it, regardless of what the consensus is. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s been wrong, and it can’t hurt to be skeptical.
I think the difference between doubting Pythagoras and doubting Jesus is that no one is claiming g Pythagoras existed to bolster their claims on holding a moral superiority.
Pythagoras literally ran a mystery cult, and was associated for centuries with magical/divine powers after. Look at what probably happened to Hippasus.
Modern Bible scholars disconnect any ideas about moral superiority. The goal is to understand Jesus as a man, to the point where you can find polemics by modern Christian scholars about how godless the field is.
It’s good to question things, but there needs to be reasoning behind your question. There needs to be some sort of explanation of how a conspiracy developed to make a guy up who was crucified (Jewish conceptions of the Messiah at the time were more a kingly type ordained to overthrow the Roman yoke, and crucifixion is a pretty humiliating death…) Where is the motive, means and opportunity for a bunch of people to simultaneously decide this guy existed?
No one alive today cares. At the time, sure. No one is a part of his cult today, unlike Jesus’s cult.
Modern Bible scholars disconnect any ideas about moral superiority.
Like I said, it’s based on knowledge from people who didn’t. I feel like you’re purposefully ignoring parts of what I said.
It’s good to question things, but there needs to be reasoning behind your question.
There does not need to be reasoning to not believe something. There needs to be reasoning to believe something. I don’t believe Jesus existed in the same way I don’t believe any other person who we don’t know about existed. I just don’t hold a belief. It doesn’t matter to me, and I haven’t seen enough evidence to actively hold a belief, and I don’t care enough to try. It’s not important to me.
I think even “vague Jesus human person existed” is maybe too much confidence with nothing to back it up. Don’t even know if it was a singular dooms day death cult leader or an amalgamation.
…there was nothing unusual about a messianic Jewish troublemaker in Judea during the early Roman Empire.
I bet he was a member of the Judean People’s Front.
Fuck off! He’d definitely have been a member of the Peoples front of Judea
Splitters
I think you’re both wrong. I think he just always looked on the bright side of life.
I think Loretta would have a problem with that.
Because of the destruction of the Temple and the Judean rebellion there were probably a lot of messianic figures.
Jesus is just the one who achieved the necessary memetic virulence to be remembered.
Saul/Paul definitely helped this.
ETA: Also, stories attributed to Jesus may have happened to other messianic preachers.
See “the Egyptian” and Simon bar Kokhba..
It makes sense - I mean, Pompey literally went into the Holy of Holies and didn’t die. It must have felt as if there was something cosmically wrong.
I read this as “Sean Paul” and now my mind won’t stop with “so me go so”
The entire myth was also borrowed from Zoroastrianism, but let’s just pretend that never happened I guess
Christianity is like English in that it will appropriate and assimilate words/ideas that help it survive
I mean, I guess… But they stole like, the entire fucking thing from an existing religion. Christianity would not exist without the parts they took from Zoroastrianism.
Didn’t they rip off a lot of Hinduism too?
Uh… how?
The Zoroastrian “borrowing” is more along the lines of there’s a perfect good force versus a perfect evil force.
But I don’t know how there would be any Hinduism influence. There’s lot of Greek influence, but India was really far away.
All the similarities to Krishna.
What similarities to Krishna? Please give me some examples, and a plausible explanation of how those ideas would have crossed the continent?
The Zoroastrian “borrowing” is more along the lines of there’s a perfect good force versus a perfect evil force.
This is far from the only thing. They also had the concept that everyone has free will to choose between good and evil. I believe they also had a concept of final judgement and heaven/hell (or an analogue).
Were those solely present in Zoroastrianism? From what I understand of Egyptian religion, there’s the whole Thoth “weighing your heart to see if it’s lighter than a feather” thing. I think free will has always been a “popular” idea, but even then, there are passages in the Bible that contradict free will - to the point that Calvinists much later discarded it.
Yup
As you indicated, this isn’t an unpopular opinion in the wider world. There are records outside of Christian scripture that mention Jesus. No legitimate historians doubt that he existed.
Yeah - it is an unpopular opinion on Lemmy though. I’ve been accused of being Christian for making this argument, as if accepting the historicity of the figure inherently means accepting the claim that he was a divine being.
historicity
I think you’re looking for the word “history”
edit: sorry… I try not to be that guy, but I couldn’t help myself
I stand corrected, TIL!
That’s because nobody goes around claiming jebus was real except christians. Way to troll, asshole.
Ehrman has said that he is both agnostic and atheist but that “I usually confuse people when I tell them I’m both”. “Atheism is a statement about faith and agnosticism is a statement about epistemology”, he said.
Ehrman argues that Jesus of Nazareth existed historically, and has summarized the claim in popular form “he did exist, whether we like it or not”. His position on Christology is historical rather than confessional. In summarizing How Jesus Became God, NPR recorded his judgment that “Jesus himself didn’t call himself God and didn’t consider himself God”. He has also written that Jesus did not teach postmortem reward and punishment as popularly conceived. In a 2020 essay he argued that Jesus proclaimed resurrection and the coming kingdom rather than eternal torment.
Adults are discussing history. Whatever they did to you in Sunday school class is not relevant here.
All legitimate historians doubt that. You’re referring to RELIGIOUS SCHOLARS, who are just lying priests and followers, desperate to make any bullshit into something more than bullshit. You’re fucking delusional.
Is Bart Ehrman a “religious scholar”?
Modern biblical scholarship starts with a prima facie assumption that miracles and god are not real. It’s a very rich field, with many people with a variety of religious beliefs and non beliefs.
Your ignorance and rejection of an entire academic field is no different from a creationist rejecting the academic consensus of biologists.
Please give me an example of “legitimate historian.” Do you read much academic history? Do you have a degree or any formal training in history on which to make the claim that you can distinguish “legitimate” historians from illegitimate ones?
Things we don’t understand happen. When we like the happening, it’s a “miracle,” when we don’t, a “catastrophe.”
I’m so puzzled by this insistence that all who analyze religious history must be religious nutcases. Even if you write off all the scholars who are religious, religion still exists as a concept in the world, and in the same way you don’t have to be a virus to study virology, you don’t have to be religious to study religion. There are plenty of atheists who are deeply interested in religion, if for no other reason than the massive impact it has on all our lives.
It’s quite possible, but the waters are muddied since every legendary facet was treated as fact, so the historical record is relatively less reliable given how much of it was manipulated in the name of faith.
Celsus, a second century author and critic of Christianity, did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Early Roman and Jewish critics of Christianity did not make the claim that Jesus did not exist. Instead, their claims were that he was the son of a Roman soldier (no virgin birth) and that his miracles were attributable to the same common magic that everyone believed in at that time.
If I were writing in 170 CE, and wanted to prove that Christianity was false because Jesus was made up, then I would probably say that.
Historians are aware of the fact that texts can be altered or manipulated or untrue. That’s part of the process of reading a primary source - thinking critically about what your source is saying, what biases they might have, and yes, if there were alterations or manipulations. There is ample study and linguistic analysis to determine those kinds of changes.
I mean… maybe. He was writing about events 150 years ago in another country. He may not have had direct knowledge of them. Think about how contentious history can be today with the benefit of modern documentary evidence, professional historians, etc. and think about how uncertain things under such distance would be back then.
You can’t just assume something is true because historians didn’t say it wasn’t. That’s not how it works.
People not claiming he wasn’t real is not evidence that he was real. Presumably they were making statements acceptable for their period in time in their location. Was it acceptable for them to proposition that he may not have existed? Is that even useful?
If the goal is to convince people to not follow that religion, and they currently do, they’re much more likely listen if you agree they have a basis in reality but are slightly incorrect. It’s part of the reason Christianity has been so successful —it meets people where they are and adapts to their beliefs.
If you want to convince people that they’re wrong, you don’t say that. You say “you’re right about this, but this part is wrong.” If you say their entire belief system is built on lies then they double down. It’s been shown time and time again with doomsday cults. The more they’re proven wrong the more strongly the followers believe in it.
Was it acceptable for them to proposition that he may not have existed?
Yes! The pagan Romans were still in power. An easy way for them to win points would have been to point out the guy never existed. Why would Tacitus describe the crucifixion if it didn’t happen?
You have communities of people claiming that this guy was real and being obnoxious to Roman authorities. The Romans eventually went full ham on Judea - burning down the second Temple. It would be really really unusual if the guy didn’t exist and they didn’t say so.
Were this any other historical figure it would be enough to say we have sufficient evidence for existence. You’re letting your bias against the followers of this figure color what evidence you’ll accept for their existence.
Are we all going to turn into Muhammad mythicists next?
I don’t think most serious scholars would swear that a Jesus existed at that time and place, but would say that it is much more likely than not based on the confirming evidence from outside of the Christian faith. At some point you need to decide how much evidence is enough for any ancient topic. There’s no particular reason that I’ve found credible enough to convince me that there WASN’T a historical figure there, even though I absolutely refuse to accept any magic or miracles.
That’s the thing though —you shouldn’t need convincing that he wasn’t real. You should need convincing the he was real. I don’t have any particular reason to doubt he existed, but equally I don’t have a good reason to believe it either, so I just don’t. That’s the default position.
I don’t need to doubt he existed to also not hold a belief that he did.
I’ve always understood historical Jesus as a concession, and not a reflection of confirmed existence.
What Jesus are they talking about? That needs to be defined first. Not the one depicted in the bible that’s for sure.
A Jesus who had an apocalyptic ministry, some amount of followers, was executed by the Roman state and said at least some of the things recounted in the Gospels. Matthew and Luke are clearly pulling from some sort of earlier source, which likely had at least some accurate accounts of his teaching.
Could also be teachings of some of the other messianic cults just misattributed to Jesus, but either way he was clearly the only one that managed to maintain relevance much past their death.
TLDR: “The one in my head, that I cherry picked from a contradictory fictional source”
The one in my head, that I cherry picked from a contradictory fictional source
Have you ever read a document from before 1400? Just curious, because you seem to be under the illusion that reading primary sources means that you either take everything they say literally, or dismiss them as entirely made up. This is exactly what I mentioned with regard to ignorance of historiography and method earlier.
Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes all say contradictory things about Socrates. Will you argue that Socrates was fictional?
The letter J wasn’t even invented until the year 1524, so formally speaking, Jesus, Jews, Judges, January, June, July, and every other word including the letter J did not exist in the 1400s or before.
Therefore, Jesus never existed.
Lower case letters are medieval too, so only IESUS existed. Case closed.
That’s just orthography; the letters and words didn’t exist, which is unrelated to whether the things they represent did. There was in fact a judge, a January, and a Julius Caesar in Rome.
The joke ->
💨
-> you
You realize that books like the First Epistle to the Corinthians were actual letters written and sent to those churches? That’s one example, but there is plenty of history to be pulled from the Bible. Shitloads of New Testament books are Apostles sending Jesus’ words to various churches and governments. Look up “epistle”.
Look at the Old Testament for more history. Books like Leviticus, where we can pick out loads of weird proscriptions, were the records of law as the Tribe of Levi saw it.
A scholar can spend a lifetime unpacking the Bible without believing in ghosts, holy or otherwise. You’re doing the “I’m too smart for this bullshit!” thing. Stop. You’re having the opposite effect.
You realize that books like the First Epistle to the Corinthians were actual letters written and sent to those churches? That’s one example, but there is plenty of history to be pulled from the Bible.
Also the fact that modern scholars recognize that not all of the Epistles were even written by Paul! You’d think if all of these Bible scholars were fervent Christians hellbent on ignoring historical evidence, they wouldn’t be arguing that Paul didn’t write Ephesians or Colossians, or that the Pentateuch was probably a compilation from four different authors!
I never knew they had all been ascribed to Paul, always thought there was various authors.
Ephesians and Colossians explicitly claim to have been written by Paul.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. - Ephesians 1:1
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. - Colossians 1:1
Joseph Smith was real too. Why should anyone care
Well, the followers of Joseph Smith spent a great deal of money back in the early ‘oughts against gay marriage. Perhaps looking into things like the Book of Abraham (a “translated” copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which wasn’t able translated until after the Rosetta Stone, and clearly does not say what Smith said it did), genetic testing of Native American tribes showing no Middle East inheritance, the various anachronisms (iirc, pre Columbian horses?) and the precedence of “KJV’ism’s” in the text might be important. We can debunk a lot of what Smith said, which might have significance for a religion that has a stranglehold over the politics of Utah.
Religious cults don’t care about reality.
Hmm… let me get this straight.
Your unpopular opinion™ is that someone named Jesus may have existed around the same time that all the stories about Jesus Christ of Nazareth were written?
and that “most mainstream scholars of the era” agree with OP
Who fucking cares?
Why do we care about history in general?
It provides us with some patterns in human behavior, things that cannot really be studied in a lab. You could approach early Christianity as a way to better understand mass movements, or the different coping strategies of an oppressed/conquered people. You could read the text of the New Testament and ask yourself why these ideas were appealing and what that might say about human nature.
As part of the study of ideas, Christianity is a really interesting expression of how Hellenistic thought mixed with Judaism. There’s a reason a lot of Neoplatonists were Christian.
The early conflicts with Judaism as Christianity developed its own identity have pretty far reaching impacts, with the death of Jesus being placed on all Jews and being used to justify atrocities to this current day.
Or, as a guy that thinks about the Roman Empire at least a couple times a day, it’s a great window into the experience of a backwater Roman province that eventually revolted and was absolutely crushed.
Jesus is not history in general, and I still don’t fucking care.
Because people made religion out of it? A religion from a Canaanitic people, who never set food in the desert they claim to have walked in for 40 years, but hey, we can’t all worship the same Canaanitic Storm God Elohim, amirite?
Yeah, cults are gonna cult. People made religion out of spaghetti and comets. I still don’t care if Jesus ever existed.
I don’t necessarily care if Buddha or Carl Sagan existed, but I like the philosophy that is attached to them.
Saying Jesus existed but biblical events didn’t happen is meaningless. And since we know the bible is full of crap, it doesn’t really matter if a Jesus existed or not. That specific fairy tale Jesus is made up. Maybe it is a dramatization of real events, maybe it is a mix of stories and legends about several different people, maybe it was fabricated, it doesn’t really matter. Saying “Jesus existed” is just feeding the apologists, and there are so many Christian historians than I cannot take claims like that seriously.
There is a lot of historical evidence that a lot of historical figures claiming to be the second coming of the messiah existed at the time. Jesus was just the most popular one. He’s the crème de la crème of messianic figures of the time. That’s all.
I remember stumbling into a book of all of said messianic figures, left out in the library.
In particular, I remember his name. Yeshua ben Yosef (sp? It’s been 20years). I thought it funny that with a name like that and a Muslim ban in place (at the time) he would have never been allowed past customs.
Okay, now do Atlantis.
The “evidence” for Atlantis is Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, which is pretty clear in context to be a myth Plato is using to make a philosophical point. He’s not claiming it is historical, and it connects to Plato’s ideal of a “Noble Lie.”
People think that if it’s not recorded, it didn’t happen. That line of thinking ignores that entropy of historical documents. Records are lost in fires, floods, looting, improper care, and more. There is also the issue of conflicting information from different sources. Is the document written by Ancient Person A about Ancient Event correct or is it Ancient Person B’s version correct.
STEM people are trained with principles that are consider absolute until a paradigm shift happens.
It’s why historians have the 5 C’s: context, change over time, causality, complexity, and contingency.
The profession what would under historical evidence and historical thinking would be lawyers. Lawyers get cases all the time were you don’t have direct evidence. For example, it’s a murder case. There is no murder weapon and no eye witness. The victim was found with multiple stab wounds. There’s a suspect in custody.
How do lawyers prove the suspect did the murder? Lawyers bring in collaborative evidence, such as: the suspect was seen with the victim before the murder, the suspect was seen in the area after the estimated time of death, the suspect had blood on their shirt, the suspect had a motive, etc.
To circle back to Jesus. There is no fundamental law of physics nor experiment to prove Jesus. Historians have to apply the five C’s to prove the existence of Jesus. Collaborating documents, events, archeological evidence, carbon dating of physical evidence, etc.
Of course as soon as religion is mentioned, people’s biases go into overdrive.
STEM people are trained with principles that are consider absolute until a paradigm shift happens.
That’s inaccurate at the very least for scientists. Scientists are trained to test and retest everything. We tend to give them names like “positive controls” when we run experiments on things we’re pretty sure are going to work, but we still test them.
