Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[King_Charles]

So nothing. Are you posting in the right topic? I thought we were debating on whether or not there was a historical Jesus?

I've said before and I'll post again, someone needs to define for me what "historical Jesus" means before I can comment on whether or not I think it's likely he existed.

To me, it's like saying "historical Superman". Superman without the super powers? What's left? The powers are so interwoven into every part of his story that there's nothing left once you hollow out and remove all the super feats. Same is true with the "historical Jesus". So many of the episodes of his story are either punctuated by or revolve around the performance of some miracle. Take away the supernatural and many of these stories simply must be removed because there's nothing left.

So what do we have left? The ministry that spread far and wide to different provinces, that attracted followers from all over, that had even notables sitting up and paying attention? Yet there's nothing from either Roman or Jewish sources in the 1st century, barring the controversial TF by Josephus. This too must be discarded as exaggeration.

How about his teachings? What were they? We have nothing from him. There is no "book of Jesus" in the Bible. All we have are the Gospel accounts, and these are the same accounts we'd have to regard as questionable because we've agreed to reject the supernatural claims. Or should we accept their testimony of what Jesus said but reject the same testimony when it makes claims of what he did?

What do we have left? Some guy named Yeshua (common name) who was a doom crier (commonly found) of the early 1st century, regarded as the messiah (frequent claim) by his small group of followers? There were probably several.

This is a fair point. I would point to examples of people know to have lived who are said to have had "superpowers" mohammed for one, he deffo existed, doesn't mean that an angel came to him or anything like that, nessecarily. Constantine won the battle of Milvian Bridge, but I doubt there was a shining cross in the sky.

I'd respectfully disagree that all the sources are exaggeration, the fact Christians are mentioned at all in the first century A.D. is evidence that they were growing remarkably rapidly(There is the Tacitus, Pliny and Josephus sources, which together are generally regarded as good evidence.) Perhaps not unlike the growth of Scientology since the 70's. (Not a flattering comparision for a Christian to make I know, but it serves its purpose here.)

I would certainly agree that there were, a lot of "messiahs" in Judea, I would go further and say there still are, as a matter of fact: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_syndrome. But that doesn't bother me, its just I studied early Christianity for my Degree, and all my lecturers seemed to agree that somebody called Jesus existed, even if he was just a wilderness profit. I was actually told to ignore anyone who thought it to be purely mythic because they generally weren't applying the correct methodology for dealing with aincent sources.

The idea of a COMPOSITE Christ, however, made up of several Jesus' was an interesting idea to play around with, and seems to fit in with your ideas somewhat...