Did Jesus exist?

[Pat Mustard]

There is no historical fact that a guy named jesus lived and the damning fact of the matter is no one has the birth date of the guy 
no has evidence of mary.

Tacitus was a careful Roman historian.  Considering the synoptic sources, Q, the Gospel of John, the writings of Paul and the other New Testament authors (most of whom are unknown), it is an extraordinary "leap of faith" to say that there was not a certain personage, an epileptic preacher with delusions of grandeur, Jesus of Nazareth.

And Tacitus didn't mention Jesus once in all his extant writings. He did mention a cult of chrestus to which the blame for the burning of rome was laid. Some of the older manuscripts shoe christus in their current forms, but all that have been examined have shown that the original e was rubbed out and repaced with an i. Now chrestus could mean jesus, but the problemvthere is that the name/nickname chrestus was so common in the early Principate that we cannot know.

[Pat Mustard]

To be fair, George Washington had better evidence for his existence than Jesus. You can't compare the two.

Of course, but my point is that the historical evidence for an historical figure named "Jesus" who came from "Nazareth" has reached a 'critical mass', that is, it is not reasonable to doubt that he existed.  Why do the overwhelming number of scholars believe in an historical Jesus?

Well considering that no town existed at Nazareth durin the period from Jesus supposed birth to the 4th century we're actually far from a critical mass.

[Whateverist]

Probably not.

Maybe.

Who cares?

All of the above.

[Edwardo Piet]

Definitively not. If it's not the Jesus described in the Bible then it's not Jesus, and there definitely was no Jesus described in the Bible.

[Minimalist]

Based on the commonality of the names Y'shua and Yosef in first century Palestine there had to be a hundred guys named Y'shua bar Yosef walking around.  There is not a shred of historical evidence that any of them ever did anything noteworthy.

All we have are the claims of later believers and that ain't worth shit.   As Bart Ehrman points out in "Lost Christianities"

The wide diversity of early Christianity may be seen above all in the theologicalbeliefs embraced by people who understood themselves to be followers of
Jesus. In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two.
Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that God had created the world. But others believed that this world had been created
by a subordinate, ignorant divinity. (Why else would the world be filled with such misery and hardship?) Yet other Christians thought it was worse than that, that this world was a cosmic mistake created by a malevolent divinity as a place of imprisonment, to trap humans and subject them to pain and suffering.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that the Jewish Scripture (the Christian “Old Testament”) was inspired by the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by the God of the Jews, who was not the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by an evil deity. Others believed it was not inspired.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus was both divine and human, God and man. There were other Christians who argued that he was completely divine and not human at all. (For them, divinity and humanity were incommensurate entities: God can no more be a man than a man can be a rock.) There were others who insisted that Jesus was a full flesh-and-blood human, adopted by God to be his son but not himself divine. There were yet other Christians who claimed that Jesus Christ was two things: a full flesh-and-blood human, Jesus, and a fully divine being, Christ, who had temporarily inhabited Jesus’ body during his ministry and left him
prior to his death, inspiring his teachings and miracles but avoiding the suffering in its aftermath.

In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that Jesus’ death brought about the salvation of the world. There were other Christians who thought that Jesus’ death had nothing to do with the salvation of the world. There were yet other Christians who said that Jesus never died.

How could some of these views even be considered Christian? Or to put the question differently, how could people who considered themselves Christian hold such views?

[Pat Mustard]

I think Jesus was a person who helped innocent people and tried to make the world a better place. and because he was too good, people worshiped him, the roman government or the law saw this as a threat and made arrangements.

Says the man who blames rape victims for their rapes.

[athrock]

On "Christians" and "Chrestians" in Tacitus’ Annals
 


(Detail of the gap where an "e" was replaced by an "i".)

From time to time in this forum and elsewhere on the Internet, atheists persist in grasping desperately for any means to call the historical existence of Jesus into question. One common tactic is to undermine the significance of the witness of Tacitus as found in his history of Rome, Annals. Wikipedia addresses the controversy in an article as follows:
 

The passage states:
 
... called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin ...
 
In 1902 Georg Andresen commented on the appearance of the first 'i' and subsequent gap in the earliest extant, 11th century, copy of the Annals in Florence, suggesting that the text had been altered, and an 'e' had originally been in the text, rather than this 'i'. "With ultra-violet examination of the MS the alteration was conclusively shown. It is impossible today to say who altered the letter e into an i. In Suetonius’ Nero 16.2, "christiani", however, seems to be the original reading". Since the alteration became known it has given rise to debates among scholars as to whether Tacitus deliberately used the term "Chrestians", or if a scribe made an error during the Middle Ages. It has been stated that both the terms Christians and Chrestians had at times been used by the general population in Rome to refer to early Christians. Robert Van Voorst states that many sources indicate that the term Chrestians was also used among the early followers of Jesus by the second century. The term Christians appears only three times in the New Testament, the first usage (Acts 11:26) giving the origin of the term. In all three cases the uncorrected Codex Sinaiticus in Greek reads Chrestianoi. In Phrygia a number of funerary stone inscriptions use the term Chrestians, with one stone inscription using both terms together, reading: "Chrestians for Christians".
 
Adolf von Harnack argued that Chrestians was the original wording, and that Tacitus deliberately used Christus immediately after it to show his own superior knowledge compared to the population at large. Robert Renehan has stated that it was natural for a Roman to mix the two words that sounded the same, that Chrestianos was the original word in the Annals and not an error by a scribe. Van Voorst has stated that it was unlikely for Tacitus himself to refer to Christians as Chrestianos i.e. "useful ones" given that he also referred to them as "hated for their shameful acts". Paul Eddy sees no major impact on the authenticity of the passage or its meaning regardless of the use of either term by Tacitus.

 
+++
 
In summary, this article contains the following points and explanations regarding the i/e gap:
 
1.     The terms “Chrestianos” and “Christianos” (as well as “Chrestus” and “Christus”) were used interchangeably during this period without any impact on the meaning of the passages in question rendering the entire kerfuffle moot.
2.     It is possible that Tacitus intentionally wrote “Chrestianos” originally and then used the word “Christos” immediately after to demonstrate his own superior knowledge.
3.     It is possible that Tacitus wrote “Chrestianos” and that a scribe in the 11th century corrected what he thought to be a blunder by Tacitus by changing the “e” to an “I”.
4.     It is possible that Tacitus wrote “Christianos” and that a later scribe wrote “Chrestianos” –an error subsequently corrected back to the original “Christianos”.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and not a single possibility speaks to the historicity of jesus.  No one disputes that christians existed, historically.

[Minimalist]

You do know that the words chrestus and christos have completely different meanings right... even though they only differ in one letter?  Sort of like "where" and "whore." 

Moreover, we have archaeological evidence for the existence of "chrestians" in Rome before 37 AD where as we have nada for "christians" until the second century.


BTW, we've been through this:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-21103-po...#pid513676

[athrock]

-and not a single possibility speaks to the historicity of jesus.  No one disputes that christians existed, historically.

Of course not. Nor does anyone dispute where they came from or who they were disciples of:

“Therefore, to put down the rumor, Nero substituted as culprits and punished in the most unusual ways those hated for their shameful acts [flagitia], whom the crowd called 'Chrestians.' The founder of this name, Christ, had been executed in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Suppressed for a time, the deadly superstition erupted again not only in Judea, the origin of this evil, but also in the city [Rome], where all things horrible and shameful from everywhere come together and become popular. Therefore, first those who admitted to it were arrested, then on their information a very large multitude was convicted, not so much for the crime of arson as for hatred of the human race. Derision was added to their end: they were covered with the skins of wild animals and torn to death by dogs; or they were crucified and when the day ended they were burned as torches. Nero provided his gardens for the spectacle and gave a show in his circus, mixing with the people in charioteer's clothing, or standing on his racing chariot.” (Annals of Imperial Rome 15:44)

The "Chrestianos" were people who followed "Christ" who was executed by the procurator Pontius Pilate.