Existence of Jesus

[DD_8630]

Well yes - that's when its called evidence.

But WHEN evidence is found - it was there all along its just no one knew of it so it was correctly assumed (burden of proof, etc) that there wasn't any evidence until further notice.

Once the evidence was found - then it had actually been there along right? Or am I getting confused?

Not necessarily. If I'm running an experiment in the lab, the evidence I collect wasn't there before I ran the experiment: it only comes into existence when I cause the desired phenomena to occur (e.g., creating surface plasmons). The data I acquire does not exist beforehand, so we really can't say that "the evidence was always there".

If we restrict ourselves to archaeology, then yes, the evidence is almost always pre-existing artefacts. But that in itself is irrelevant: though the artefacts may exist, we don't know that they exist until we find them.

E.G: Fossils that had been there all along but weren't considered evidence because no one even knew they had existed. Once they were found - they had been there as evidence all along but noone knew of that evidence so it was considered that there wasn't any (talking about these hypothetical fossils I mean).

You're great to discuss with.

Love you too babe.

I just think that it is perhaps, on average, more statistically probable for someone such as Jesus to have been based on someone to have been just completely made up from scratch. Maybe not.

But why? If there is no evidence for Jesus' existence, and since there are so many fictional characters in ancient documents, surely it is more likely that he didn't exist?

Basically, I'm wondering why you think it is more probable that he did exist. Is that not a claim which requires support?

The thing is though IF Jesus was based on a real person - was that real person even called Jesus? Or was it a similar name? Or a COMPLETELY different name? In that case would that person even count as or be similar enough to Jesus to even count as 'the real Jesus'?

Well, the original text called him by a name that would be transliterated into 'Yeshua' or something similar. But ultimately, we all know who we're talking about: the founder of Christianity, the speaker on whom those Biblical words are based.

Either he existed or he didn't :p

I mean where do you draw the line? How similar would someone that the Jesus character was based on have to be to Jesus - the be considered the so called 'real original Jesus'. In other words the person that Jesus was based on that's similar enough to be the real Jesus that the supernaturally absurd Jesus of the bible was based on?

And if he had a very similar name to Jesus (because he was based on 'The Jesus') of the bible - would that count? How similar would he have to be? I mean would he have to be EXACTLY the same just without all the supernatural nonsense? That would be much much more unlikely than someone that's merely similar enough I think.

I think that there is reason enough to conclude two major alternatives: either there was one real man, on whom the Biblical character of 'Jesus' was based off, or said character is a complete, anachronous fabrication.

There are other alternatives, of course, but I think they are too unlikely to consider.

Probably

Almost certainly

Yes.
No.
Maybe...
Can you repeat the question?

:p