Any Evidence For A Historical Jesus?

[DeistPaladin]

Still no answer to my contradiction. The silence is deafening..

I think he's gone back to his Christian forum to tell his tales of glorious victory.

[FallentoReason]

Still no answer to my contradiction. The silence is deafening..

I think he's gone back to his Christian forum to tell his tales of glorious victory.

[DeistPaladin]

Yeah, I don't get it either.

[King_Charles]

Also there is no evidence in the letters of the New Testament for an actual Jesus either. Because epistles portray a Jesus who never came down to earth in the first place.

I'm fairly new to the idea that Paul wrote his letters before the Gospels. I don't understand how that works out... Does that mean he single-handedly invented the name and character of Jesus?

When discussing this topic you really need to bear in mind what the study of ancient history consists of, basically it is taking one or, if you're really lucky, two extant sources referencing an event or person, the said evet might still be over a hundred years before the time of the source, and trying to squeeze every last ounce of factual inference that you can possibly make from them. Then throwing it away and arguing something completely random that sounds interesting and plausible, because you realise that about a million people have already used occam's razor on that one.

Also, references to miracles, gods intervening in human action were often a standard part of how people understood the world, Herodotus There is no direct evidence for a lot of historical figures, we believe because only one or two accounts reference them, and nothing flat out contradicts it.

IMO, if you apply occam's razor judicially to the evidence there is you will have to admit that Jesus existed. That there was a holy man/ mystic/ madman wondering around Judea at that time that got executed by the roman state, which sparked a cult, which just happened to grow into a big religion makes far more sense than a load of people deciding to start a cult on somebody who didn't even exist, I mean sure, you can think that the cult was created or aggressively expanded by Paul, Peter and James, that's plausible. But is there enough time for them to make up a whole life story for this purpose given that what evidence we have point to there being a quite well established cult by 64 A.D., still within living memory of the projected life of Christ, when there was record of them being established as far as Rome? according to what sources we have (i.e. very few, but there is nothing that contradicts it so we have to go with it given the sparsity of the historical record)

Occam's razor people, don't let us rub off on you and take leave of logic as soon as Religion rears its head.

[FallentoReason]

...people deciding to start a cult on somebody who didn't even exist

It's a crazy thought isn't it? The thing is that Christianity had it pretty easy given that Zeus/Heracles (another fellow 'Son of God' that never existed) was already fresh in the Greek's minds.

If Christianity was 100% original then maybe the target audience would have rejected it completely.

[King_Charles]

...people deciding to start a cult on somebody who didn't even exist

It's a crazy thought isn't it? The thing is that Christianity had it pretty easy given that Zeus/Heracles (another fellow 'Son of God' that never existed) was already fresh in the Greek's minds.

If Christianity was 100% original then maybe the target audience would have rejected it completely.

Well it deffo wasn't original. The messiah had been predicted by the Jews for hundreds of years before Jesus came along. This can lend force to the argument that Jesus was just a guy that happened galvanize the latent religious and revolutionary fervor in Judea at the time. (You know the Monty python gag about Judean people's front/People's front of Judea - well they know their history, Josephus gives an account of three Jewish factions who were fighting each other in a civil war while the Romans were actually laying siege to Jerusalem, a few decades after the death of Christ.)

Or Christians might argue that the fact that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies points to him being the messiah. 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...

You actually might want to check out mithras: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries a religion that was basically coterminous with early Christianity that went on similar lines. There was also the cult of Isis that also dealt with the theme of resurrection and was, like Christianity, very popular among the Roman masses, and is often seen as a precursor for the madonna cult of the Christian era.

And don't let's get started on the possible Gnostic/Zoroastrian influence...

[Zen Badger]

When discussing this topic you really need to bear in mind what the study of ancient history consists of, basically it is taking one or, if you're really lucky, two extant sources referencing an event or person, the said evet might still be over a hundred years before the time of the source, and trying to squeeze every last ounce of factual inference that you can possibly make from them. Then throwing it away and arguing something completely random that sounds interesting and plausible, because you realise that about a million people have already used occam's razor on that one.

Also, references to miracles, gods intervening in human action were often a standard part of how people understood the world, Herodotus There is no direct evidence for a lot of historical figures, we believe because only one or two accounts reference them, and nothing flat out contradicts it.

IMO, if you apply occam's razor judicially to the evidence there is you will have to admit that Jesus existed. That there was a holy man/ mystic/ madman wondering around Judea at that time that got executed by the roman state, which sparked a cult, which just happened to grow into a big religion makes far more sense than a load of people deciding to start a cult on somebody who didn't even exist, I mean sure, you can think that the cult was created or aggressively expanded by Paul, Peter and James, that's plausible. But is there enough time for them to make up a whole life story for this purpose given that what evidence we have point to there being a quite well established cult by 64 A.D., still within living memory of the projected life of Christ, when there was record of them being established as far as Rome? according to what sources we have (i.e. very few, but there is nothing that contradicts it so we have to go with it given the sparsity of the historical record)

Occam's razor people, don't let us rub off on you and take leave of logic as soon as Religion rears its head.

The very real possibility exists that there was an itinerant preacher called jesus wandering around Palestine, maybe more than one.
But so what?
That is no reason to think that he was the son of god.
And there is still no evidence for the miracles he supposedly performed.

[King_Charles]

Yes, at least one, which only religious people are known to have commiitted.

I think I know what's coming, but go ahead.

Ok, well I was hoping I could get a better understanding from you by hearing your answer first, but that's alright.

Is there an unforgivable sin?

NO
Acts 13:39 and by him all that believe are justified from all things.

YES
Mark 3:29 but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.
Luke 12:10 but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.

Quite explicit yesses and no. Or maybe I've misunderstood something? I'm not sure.

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.

---

When discussing this topic you really need to bear in mind what the study of ancient history consists of, basically it is taking one or, if you're really lucky, two extant sources referencing an event or person, the said evet might still be over a hundred years before the time of the source, and trying to squeeze every last ounce of factual inference that you can possibly make from them. Then throwing it away and arguing something completely random that sounds interesting and plausible, because you realise that about a million people have already used occam's razor on that one.

Also, references to miracles, gods intervening in human action were often a standard part of how people understood the world, Herodotus There is no direct evidence for a lot of historical figures, we believe because only one or two accounts reference them, and nothing flat out contradicts it.

IMO, if you apply occam's razor judicially to the evidence there is you will have to admit that Jesus existed. That there was a holy man/ mystic/ madman wondering around Judea at that time that got executed by the roman state, which sparked a cult, which just happened to grow into a big religion makes far more sense than a load of people deciding to start a cult on somebody who didn't even exist, I mean sure, you can think that the cult was created or aggressively expanded by Paul, Peter and James, that's plausible. But is there enough time for them to make up a whole life story for this purpose given that what evidence we have point to there being a quite well established cult by 64 A.D., still within living memory of the projected life of Christ, when there was record of them being established as far as Rome? according to what sources we have (i.e. very few, but there is nothing that contradicts it so we have to go with it given the sparsity of the historical record)

Occam's razor people, don't let us rub off on you and take leave of logic as soon as Religion rears its head.

The very real possibility exists that there was an itinerant preacher called jesus wandering around Palestine, maybe more than one.
But so what?
That is no reason to think that he was the son of god.
And there is still no evidence for the miracles he supposedly performed.

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

[FallentoReason]

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 Gospels are 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.

You actually might want to check out mithras: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries a religion that was basically coterminous with early Christianity that went on similar lines. There was also the cult of Isis that also dealt with the theme of resurrection and was, like Christianity, very popular among the Roman masses, and is often seen as a precursor for the madonna cult of the Christian era.

And don't let's get started on the possible Gnostic/Zoroastrian influence...

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?

[Phil]

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.