Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[King_Charles]

certainly the authors of the synoptic gospels knew their Torah backwards...

The author of Matthew most certainly didn't have anything but a passing familiarity with the Septuagint and even then he made up a prophecy. Here is a quick and dirty way to show none of the authors that wrote "Jesus of Nazareth" were not familiar with Hebrew. Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament yet supposedly it says the messiah shall be from Nazareth (and Bethlehem but that is a clan not a geographic location). The Old Testament does say...

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots

Branch in Hebrew is the word Netzer which has the same consonants as Nazareth and that is why the gospels made such a dumb mistake.

Bethlehem was deffo a city, it is mentioned a few times in the OT, and the Romans sacked it during the Jewish war. Pretty hard to sack a tribe.

As for Nazareth, the point that the author was making was relating back to the suffering servant prophecy. "The stone that the builders rejected shall become the cornerstone..." and all that. Nazareth was the Jewish equivalent of wales, very bad reputation, collaborators, looked down upon by the rest of the nation. A whole stream of OT prophecies emphasize the Messiah's lowly origins, calling him the Nazarene feeds into all of that.

---

I'm not gonna insult your intellect by pointing out that this is a particularly weak argument, considering Jesus and certainly the authors of the synoptic gospels knew their Torah backwards...

Funny you say that. Considering the Gospel is mere hearsay I'd say the anonymous authors literally worked backwards and forced this supposed messiah to fulfil all the prophecies. A classic example is the birth of Jesus where Luke invented a census which would make it plausible for Jesus to have been born in Bethlehem. I wouldn't say this author lied, just wrote down the rumours going around.

Um, yeah that's my point, why it is a very weak arguement.

So... You agree with me?

Yes, I'm well aware of all this. I'm just surprised that your argument hinged on the fact that it should be ridiculous that a religion was formed out of someone 'non-existent'. So what? Nothing new to see here.

The point I was making with Heracles was that this myth was already around for 2500 years prior to Jesus. Why don't you believe in good old 'Hercules'? Why Jesus?

The myth about Hercules grew over millennia, the Christ myth grew to fruition in thirty years. There simply isn't the timescale for there not at least to be a real historical figure to act as the kernel.

History would have given us the proof of this person who publicly preached and healed to thousands. Nothing to be found though, so I just don't see how it's reasonable to say there actually was said person.

---

That's easy, the holy spirit is the spirit of God at work in the world God so if you believe, as in acts, you are by definition not sinning against the Holy Spirit.

Where does it mention 'sin' in the verses? You haven't clarified why one tells me I can be forgiven from anything while the others say I can't be forgiven from all things.

Blaspheme then, you know what I mean.

Do you not see the contradiction in the verses? One speaks of absolute forgiveness while the other mentions something that cannot be forgiven. Being a believer or not doesn't come into this because the whole point of Jesus is that he is the redeemer and cleans up the mess that is humanity. Oh, except if you blaspheme against the holy spirit. See what I mean?

Simply: To blaspheme against the holy spirit is to refuse to believe in Jesus. Therefore there is no contradiction between saying that "all that believe are justified " and that to blaspheme against the holy spirit is unforgivable. Clear now?

I mean it's not like there aren't enough genuine contradictions in the bible for you to nitpick over....