Did Jesus exist?

[Regina]

The truth is no one really knows if he existed or not. Like Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Jesus could have been the name of someone the writers knew and they used it because it sounded good and/or was a tribute to that person.

But it still doesn't make the slightest bit of difference if there was a historical Jesus or not.  We all know that J.K. Rowling based Professor Snape on a real teacher she had named John Nettleship.  That doesn't mean that Professor Snape, the guy who swung a wand and cast spells, was real.  Even if there was some itinerant preacher named Jehoshua running around first century Jerusalem, that means fuck all to justifying the Biblical magic man.

Exactly.

Even if he was real, his story has become so contorted and exaggerated that it lacks credence treating the whole thing, as the Bible puts it, as historical fact. We know there wasn't a man who walked on water or fed 5000 people with a loaf of bread. That much is obvious because it's impossible. There might have even been several pseudo-Jesuses running around The Levant in that time period, who all served as inspiration for the writers, but that still doesn't give the Bible any more credibility for what it claims.

[The Grand Nudger]

"To varying degrees, A, B, C, D, and E mix fact with fiction in their writings when they mention F."
"Therefore, there is no evidence that F existed."

That's your logic. It's... really... dumb. That's probably all that deserves to be said about it.

Trouble is, that's not my logic.  But go ahead and argue that with yourself?  

Yeah... people tended to be deified and mythologized in the first century... I guess anyone who hailed the Caesars to be gods must be an unreliable source because, according to your logic, as we must not believe that any historical Caesars were gods, the ones that we are told were divine could not in fact have actually existed. Who was the historical Vespasian? Not the one who healed the blind and the lame. How many Vespasians do we have? Can we know if anything Seutonius wrote about him was true? Caligula and Nero? Hadrian's servant boy? All were claimed by their loyal followers to be gods, which is clearly fictional... therefore they must be fictional too. We are told that Plato was born with bees resting upon his lips because his words would later be so sweet... umm.. Which Plato is this again? Not the historical Plato. I guess we cannot tell the man from the myth. Herodotus and Pliny the Elder's encyclopedic volumes that historians have found immensely useful and important? Throw them out. They contain dog-headed people and magic. Therefore, they are all fiction.

That's your logic. It's... really... dumb. That's definitely all that deserves to be said about it.

-as above, also not my logic.....so you're 0/2 at calling me dumb just -this- post.  You can argue this with yourself as well, but gratz on the TQ defense of "historical jesus" all the same.

Sorry, I'm not in the business of healing the blind. That you've rejected the evidence without reason doesn't oblige rational people to do so... thankfully, when one observes the educated circles around the globe, we learn that they don't. It's only the uneducated, such as yourself, who seem to pride themselves on stupid theories like creationism and mythicism.

Is there some point where you make a cogent argument for jesus, here?  No?  Right.

Uh... Yeah, it kind of is your problem... since according to, well, sane, reasonable standards, the historicity of Jesus is beyond doubt.

Your lack of evidence is my problem......and invalid inference counts in a reasonable standard?  I think you're using a different meaning of the word reasonable than I am.  Beyond doubt, you say? So this is the part where, failing to provide evidence or argument, you double down and declare something to be "beyond doubt"?  

"A, B, C, D, and E include varying degrees of fiction in their writings."
"Therefore, there is no evidence that F existed."

Again, that's your logic. It's really, really dumb. That's all that...

Now I feel like you're just being lazy.........

What is this? Are you trying to be the least interesting troll here or.... what? Do you have anything else to say besides repeating this same idiotic garbage? 

No amount of calling me names will get you closer to historical jesus, you realize?

The details are important... once you have learned to use reasoning skills... have examined the texts... and have used those reasoning skills to establish that there are details to be ascertained.

Says the man who tried embarrassing details, then defended with an appeal to hypocrisy........while he argued against straw.

You're not at that stage yet, clearly.

And "the general portrait of the character" does not automatically mean a fictional character... again, B doesn't follow A.... but, we both know by this point, logic isn't your strong suit.

The general portrait of your jesus character appears to be fictional.  


Let's cut to the chase, do you actually have any argument for a historical jesus -other- than that you think I'm dumb Nestor? How long will we have to wait to see that?

[pocaracas]

So much ink is used on these discussions and yet... One only scratches the surface...

Why do you guys use the bible as the only source of information?
The bible is a simple compilation of books that were in circulation concerning the life of this Christ character. But there were many more books in circulation than the ones that made it into the bible.
Some are lost forever, some have been found in pieces, some are remarkably complete.

Based on those, it is interesting to note some striking similarities between the Christ figure and the Teacher of righteousness. This Teacher was an Essene, a particular branch of Judaism present, at the time, between Jerusalem and Damascus. Preaching poverty, help your fellow man, and denouncing the dominant Jewish faction, the Pharisees, as bearers of a false view of God, or something...

It is my opinion that many of Jesus' religious and political views that ended up in the bible stem from this Essene group.
Couple that with some young upstart wannabe Teacher of righteousness who goes into Jerusalem to preach his message and actually gets strung up for going against the ruling class...and you have the makings of a historical Jesus.

Is there any evidence for this, beyond the coincidences? No.
Is this more plausible than magic son of a god? Yes.... But, then again, most alternatives are more plausible than magic.

[GrandizerII]

The truth is no one really knows if he existed or not. Like Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Jesus could have been the name of someone the writers knew and they used it because it sounded good and/or was a tribute to that person.

But it still doesn't make the slightest bit of difference if there was a historical Jesus or not.  We all know that J.K. Rowling based Professor Snape on a real teacher she had named John Nettleship.  That doesn't mean that Professor Snape, the guy who swung a wand and cast spells, was real.  Even if there was some itinerant preacher named Jehoshua running around first century Jerusalem, that means fuck all to justifying the Biblical magic man.

Who the fuck cares?

Nestor's position (and mine) is that the Jesus in the Bible is the historical Jesus but with some of his events being exaggerated by the authors (and a few events that didn't happen). Not that the Jesus in the Bible is a myth but based on some anonymous character in history. Again, sort of like Sai Baba, who was obviously a real person, but whose life was made a legend with lots of exaggerations.

[Minimalist]

The truth is no one really knows if he existed or not. Like Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Jesus could have been the name of someone the writers knew and they used it because it sounded good and/or was a tribute to that person.

A compelling case has been made that the Wizard of Oz was a very clever satire.  The NT doesn't even have that going for it.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

So much ink is used on these discussions and yet... One only scratches the surface...

Why do you guys use the bible as the only source of information?
The bible is a simple compilation of books that were in circulation concerning the life of this Christ character. But there were many more books in circulation than the ones that made it into the bible.
Some are lost forever, some have been found in pieces, some are remarkably complete.

Based on those, it is interesting to note some striking similarities between the Christ figure and the Teacher of righteousness. This Teacher was an Essene, a particular branch of Judaism present, at the time, between Jerusalem and Damascus. Preaching poverty,  help your fellow man, and denouncing the dominant Jewish faction, the Pharisees, as bearers of a false view of God, or something...

It is my opinion that many of Jesus' religious and political views that ended up in the bible stem from this Essene group.
Couple that with some young upstart wannabe Teacher of righteousness who goes into Jerusalem to preach his message and actually gets strung up for going against the ruling class...and you have the makings of a historical Jesus.

Is there any evidence for this, beyond the coincidences? No.
Is this more plausible than magic son of a god? Yes.... But, then again, most alternatives are more plausible than magic.

The Essenes didn't believe in physical resurrections and they didn't take craps on the Sabbath.

[Cephus]

But it still doesn't make the slightest bit of difference if there was a historical Jesus or not.  We all know that J.K. Rowling based Professor Snape on a real teacher she had named John Nettleship.  That doesn't mean that Professor Snape, the guy who swung a wand and cast spells, was real.  Even if there was some itinerant preacher named Jehoshua running around first century Jerusalem, that means fuck all to justifying the Biblical magic man.

Who the fuck cares?

Nestor's position (and mine) is that the Jesus in the Bible is the historical Jesus but with some of his events being exaggerated by the authors (and a few events that didn't happen). Not that the Jesus in the Bible is a myth but based on some anonymous character in history. Again, sort of like Sai Baba, who was obviously a real person, but whose life was made a legend with lots of exaggerations.

It would have to be virtually all of the events grossly exaggerated because all of the supernatural stuff is complete and total bunk.  But still, that means nothing because for theists, it is the supernatural crap that they care about and any real person, however accurately the Bible describes them, is not the Jesus that these people have religious faith in.

So again, it's all a waste of time.  The Jesus of Christianity is not the Jesus of history, no matter what that happens to be.

[GrandizerII]

Nestor's position (and mine) is that the Jesus in the Bible is the historical Jesus but with some of his events being exaggerated by the authors (and a few events that didn't happen). Not that the Jesus in the Bible is a myth but based on some anonymous character in history. Again, sort of like Sai Baba, who was obviously a real person, but whose life was made a legend with lots of exaggerations.

It would have to be virtually all of the events grossly exaggerated because all of the supernatural stuff is complete and total bunk.  But still, that means nothing because for theists, it is the supernatural crap that they care about and any real person, however accurately the Bible describes them, is not the Jesus that these people have religious faith in.

So again, it's all a waste of time.  The Jesus of Christianity is not the Jesus of history, no matter what that happens to be.

No, not all grossly exaggerated.

My position, which is no different from the position mainstream scholarship holds (outside of Christian circles, that is), is that:

Jesus was from Nazareth (no gross exaggerations there)
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist
Jesus had disciples who believed he was the Messiah
Jesus preached to many and was seen as a miracle healer by easily suggestible people
Jesus was crucified

None of those events were legendary in nature, they could have happened. So Jesus could have been historical in at least some of these scenes in the Bible.

That Sai Baba had many of his events exaggerated does not mean that Sai Baba never existed or that the real Sai Baba was so hidden by the Sai Baba of the legends that they're two almost completely different people. Same with Jesus.

[Minimalist]

The problem, as it has been from the start, is that the evidence for the jesus of christianity is the same as the evidence for the jesus of history.  And, as evidence goes, it makes a better fairy tale than a historical reality.

[robvalue]

What is the evidence those events happened?

And even if they did, those criteria could apply to a hundred people for all we know.

As far as I know, the only event that can be supported outside the bible is the crucifixion, and even that doesn't seem like a slam dunk. What other sources back the remaining points? I may have forgotten something, I'd be interested to be reminded.